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BEAUTY FOR ASHES 




ALBION FELLOWS BACON 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

BY 

ALBION FELLOWS BACON 

With Numerous Illustrations 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1914 






Copyright, 1913» 1914 
By survey associates. Inc. 

Copyright, 1914 
By DODD, mead & COMPANY 



MUCH OF THIS MATERIAL WAS PUBLISHED 
IN THE SURVEY DURING 1913 AND 1914 



OCT 24 1914 
>aA387182 



TO 

MARGARET 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEE PAGE 

I The Sheltered Life . • . . . . 1 

II The Shadow 23 

III The Clutch of the Thorns . . . • 45 

IV '* Beauty for Ashes " 69 

V The Working Girls 97 

VI The Poor and Their Poverty . . . 127 

VII Laying the Foundations 154 

VIII The First Campaign 191 

IX Defeat 230 

X The Homes of Indiana 261 

XI Victory 291 

XII Looking Forward 326 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Albion Fellows Bacon ..... Frontispiece \^ 



FACING 
PAGE 



That vision of wind-swept^ sun-crowned hills and 

great free spaces ^ ^ 

The church, just beyond the big gate, at the end of 

the Cherry Lane 10 i 

Old St. Mary's . 36 ^^ 

HP or P^ 42 -^ 

Whose washwoman lives here? 54' 

No. 1. The best of them were cheerless and dismal 58^'^ 

No. 2. Rear view of No. 1. A Pretence of privacy 62 \X 
Miss Metz, Visiting Nurse. A woman with a 

happy light in her eyes 68 

Where the White Death throttles its victims . . 72 v^ 

Miss Lydia Metz, Visiting Nurse . . . . . ^Q ^ 

A Civic Cancer Spot 76 i/^ 

What ideals can the children have, who live here . 90 ^ 

" Cocaine Alley." A breeding place of vice . . 100 t-'^ 
Here we built two large bungalows, with screened 

open sides 112 *^ 

Row of girls at the camp; Miss Foster at extreme ^ 

right 124 ^ 

Citizens in the making 130 ^^ 

Heredity and environment both doing their worst . 138 

Poverty's Children 142 I' 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACINQ 
PAGE 



" If it were our baby—" . . ..... . 148 ^ 

A wretched interior crowded with many families . 152 ' 

Behind the bill-board 152 v 

No. 1. Front of tenement row. Dark, damp and . 

unsanitary 160 

No. 2. Rear of same. No playground but street, 

alleys, ashbins and sheds 160 v' 

Day shifts and night shifts use the same beds . • 168^ 

The common scandal of all our States .... 174^ 

A typical tenement of the older towns . . . . 178^^ 
Relief Scenes . . . . . . . . . . .186 y 

Mrs. Linton A. Cox 206^ 

Senator Linton A. Cox ,.i . . 206- 

Dr. J. D. Foor • 206 

Mrs. J. D. Foor ., * . 206 v 

Those who need the bill most cannot come . . . 252^ 

Grac55 Julian Clarke . . . 264 ' 

Senator Charles B. Clarke . . f. - •: . • 264 . 

Dr. J. N. Hurty .. • . 264 

Senator Edgar Durre 264 * 

The fringe of miserable dwellings where the colony 

of poor was steadily increasing 270 

The unannexed suburb ...... . . 280 ' 

" Cheese Hill/' Evansville ..... . . 328 

Visions made realities by practical men .i . i. ... 348 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES 



" BEAUTY FOR ASHES " 
Isaiah 61 y S 



CHAPTER I 

THE SHELTERED LIFE 

Whence came the ember 
That touched our young souls' candles first with light. 
In shadowy years too distant to remember. 
Where childhood merges backwards into night ? i 

— A. F. B. 

The irony of fate and a succession of paradoxes 
made me a housing reformer. A timid child, shy and 
small, loving beautiful things, and with a passion for 
delicate odours, more unlikely material for one would 
have been hard to find. It was like cutting a suit of 
armour out of a piece of chiffon. 

If we had stayed in the city where I was born, the 
probabilities are that there would not long have been 
any such little child, for she would have slipped 
away, a small pale shadow, into the larger shadows 
while the dawn was yet grey. So thought my 
mother, the widow of a Methodist minister, so she 
took me with my two older sisters to the country 
place where her own girlhood was spent. Here, near 
her father's house and her brother's, she built a home, 
and on a ridge of hills the families dwelt in a little 

iFrom "Songs Ysame." 



2 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

community of their own, like a highland clan upon 
its own peaks. 

The neighbourhood had been settled by Scotch-Irish 
families. Among the earliest of these pioneers were 
my great grandfather Erskine and his suns, one of 
whom was a widely travelled scholar and philanthro- 
pist. As their sturdy spirit still dominated our el- 
ders, the community was a Hoosier mixture of 
Thrums, '' Sweet Auburn " and Kildare. On the 
map only eight miles away from the city, on the cal- 
endar it was a whole generation back from it. In 
the little church quaint ancient hymns were sung. 
Old country tales, folk lore and ballads, proverbs, 
enriched by brogue or burr, found voice at every 
fireside where young and old gathered together at the 
country parties. 

No streets had McCutchanville. It was scarcely a 
hamlet, since it had not even a store, and its pt)st- 
office was " Squire Mack's " private sitting room 
where the mail was brought once a week. It was 
simply a scattered settlement having two foci, the 
church and the school house. Its laws were the Ten 
Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the customs 
of the fathers. 

The good folk never talked of social service in 
McCutchanville, but they lived it unconsciously, just 
" being good neighbours." No one thought it un- 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 3 

usual when a tii'ed fanner who had worked in the field 
all day gave up his night's rest to watch over a friend 
down with typhoid. Their wives made similar sac- 
rifices. Gentle and kindly, they cared for the sick, 
welcomed the new bom, and " laid out " the dead. 
And he who was humblest and most needy received 
most care, with a generous inclusiveness in the use 
of the word " neighbour." 

When we left the city I was too young to have 
more than a confused memory of its noise and dust 
and ugliness. If I had stayed there and lived I 
should probably have grown up to take its conditions 
as a matter of course. Used to crowding and 
cramping, like a cucumber grown in a bottle, I would 
never have realised the unrighteousness of a twenty- 
five foot lot, and would have known nothing better 
than the grid-ironed perspective of a " cubist '' city. 
My keen little nose would have grown accustomed 
to city smells, unless it had lost its keenness as ears 
do in a boiler factory. 

The transition to the country was like waking 
from a grey dream into a realm of colour and light. 
It was a wonderland, with Heaven among its hills 
and fairyland in its hollows. I walked as in a world 
of magic and miracle, enfolded in a glamour. All 
the country sounds were music, all the country si- 
lences were full of voices, for I could never shake ofF 



4 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the feeling that inanimate things had consciousness. 

The most wonderful thing about the place was the 
sky. It seemed that one could almost step into it 
from the summit of the ridge, over which it hung 
in a magnificent arch extending up the long sweep 
of the valley. Perhaps it was because the sky came 
down all around so that one was always conscious of 
it, that I felt a Presence about me, so real and close 
that I sometimes reached up my hand to It. 

In spring the orchards were a cloud of pink, and 
the fields were " star-sown " with anemones and 
spring beauties. Later they were covered with blu- 
ets. The shady country lanes trailed with wild 
roses, and the woods were sweet with fern. In win- 
ter there was as much reason for rapture, when the 
fields were untracked slopes of dazzling white, when 
the fences were piled with marvellous drifts, and frost 
pictures covered the window panes. 

^^ Oh, how the sight of things that are great en- 
larges the eye." Standing on the hill-tops, one could 
look miles away, across the valley, where farm houses 
dotted wide fields and orchards; away to the wood- 
lands, away to the far rim of blue hills. Through 
all these years I have kept that vision of those wind- 
swept, sun-crowned hiUs, and the feeling of those 
great free spaces. It is this that makes our cities 
choke me. 







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THE SHELTERED LIFE 5 

In such surroundings was my childhood passed. 
I wandered in a maze of delight, alone in the fields, 
or with my sister Annie and six or more boy and girl 
cousins, who led in every kind of adventure. Better 
than adventure I loved the making of tiny houses 
under the apple trees. They were built of bark and 
stone, with mossy roofs and antique chimneys. Lying 
flat on the grass, I could peer in through the cun- 
ning windows^ and enjoy the enchanted square of 
sunlight on the little floor. I had never heard of 
town planning, but took delight in arranging quaint 
villages with patient grouping and, in the odd way 
children have, inhabited them all myself. 

The time came when I had to go through the big 
gate at the end of the cherry lane and follow the 
other children along the highway to school. But 
wonderland was not left behind. The new environ- 
ment was full of mystery. The very customs of the 
school were as strange as heathen rites. Arithmetic 
was as occult as. Hindu numbers, and the parsing of 
the older grammar classes seemed to me some weird 
incantation, though the verses they parsed became 
a part of my very fibre. 

How much more the playground taught than the 
school room, the playmates than the teacher! I am 
not sure that the equal rights of that playground, 
which boys and girls shared together, and the exer- 



6 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

cise to the full of every girl's abilities, did not give 
me courage later to meet men upon a broader field. 
Years before the wave of feminism had swept over 
the country, little streams were hastening down to 
swell the great river, from other springs as obscure 
as this country school. 

With a mixture of good fellowship, tolerance and 
chivalry, the boys admitted the girls to their ball 
game, when the latter so desired, each girl keeping 
her individual base of femininity as each possessed 
it. Big strong Mandy, clear-eyed and muscular, 
stood like a young Juno on the diamond, with bat 
poised in air. Striking the ball a resounding swat 
that sent it into the middle of the adjacent field, she 
cleared the round of bases in a way to win a hurrah 
from the boys. Prim, modest Sallie gave the ball a 
precise tap, and scuttled with neat little steps, like a 
partridge, to the first base. Pretty sister Annie, with 
dark eyes and cherry lips, was as much applauded 
when she missed as when she made a strike. 

I was too little and my arms too small to wield the 
bat very successfully. When the other children 
romped and wrestled, I gathered the smaller ones 
about me and told them fairy tales, shrinking from 
the rough-and-tumble. It was with scorn, however, 
that I regarded my own cowardice and I set myself 
exercises to overcome it. The first step was to con- 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 7 

quer the outward effects of it. How well I remem- 
ber when a sudden hard bump brought my mouth 
open for the usual howl, but an equally sudden de- 
termination, " I'll not cry any more when I am hurt," 
closed it with a snap before the howl escaped. It 
was a snap that even a legislative defeat later failed 
to undo. 

Lightning terrified me until I stood out in a storm 
long enough and found that neither the roars nor 
flashes injured me. Ghost stories made bed-time 
fearsome. We lay awake a long time, in the warm 
darkness, telling them to each other, interspersed with 
fairy tales. At last Annie would say, in awful tones, 
" I'll dar-r-e you to feel under the bed." 

The summer night at once grew chill, but down 
on my knees I was bound to get and give a senate 
probe to the bogies underneath. 

It was a more difficult matter to manage the fear 
of animals. Their attacks seemed so much more 
personal than those of the elements or the spooks. 
After one encounter with the setting hen I could never 
again bring myself to attempt to get her off her nest. 

The worst bugbear of all was the big dog that had 
to be passed on the way to school. Hailing pass- 
ers-by far down the road with a savage " Woof ! 
woof ! " he would tear back and forth and leap at the 
fence until they were out of sight. To pass the place 



8 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

alone was a nightmare. To try to sneak by was 
as hopeless as to run, while parleying made matters 
worse. Finally, murmuring many prayers, I marched 
stiffly by, cold and dizzy with fright, my heart beat- 
ing in my ears. At a safe distance I sank down, 
exhausted and limp, but with faith renewed and cour- 
age screwed one point higher. 

Alas, a born coward must always suffer: I might 
conquer a host of fears, but new ones always ap- 
peared; and while I learned to hide the outward 
tremor, the inward agony was never overcome. 
There has always been a Big Dog in the way. 

Looking back to see what were the forces that 
made me a housing reformer, I am struck by the in- 
fluences in that rural community that made for " the 
newer citizenship." There was the " good neigh- 
bour " spirit. There was the sense of responsibility 
to God and man developed in boys and girls by the 
puritanical severity that held them accountable to the 
home, the church and the community. There was the 
spirit of patriotism which is the " common denomi- 
nator '' of both state and civic pride. 

The community was still throbbing from the touch 
of the Civil War. On the walls of some of its homes 
the flag was draped over a blue coat or a sheathed 
sword. On the hillside back of the church where the 
" rude forefathers of the hamlet slept," were graves 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 9 

of soldiers kept green by the hands of school chil- 
dren. From those who mourned and those who had 
fought beside the fallen heroes the children learned 
what it meant to fight for their country. Their own 
" rocks and rills " were in mind, as with fervour they 
sang " America." And when in school they recited, 
in deafening unison, " Strike, for your altars and 
your fires," each saw himself a hero in defence of his 
own hearth-stone, and a thrill ran down each little 
stiff^ened back, while every small arm tensed. 

And this was because they had real homes, worth 
fighting for, not boxes or coops or traps or sties, set 
in rows and squeezed into blocks. 

All the civic and social influences of the community 
centred about the schoolhouse and the church. Every 
kind of meeting took place at the schoolhouse. Here 
young and old came together for the singing school, 
spelling matches, school exhibitions, or " the liter- 
ary," and on its platform I made my first timid bow 
to the public. 

Sitting beside my mother on hot Sundays, I listened 
to the soothing voice of the old minister and gazed 
out of the high windows, where the cedar boughs were 
stirring. Even yet I can smell the cedar, hear the 
peaceful sound of far-off doves, feel the holy calm, 
and, most of all, the sense of the Presence that en- 
folded me and filled ^U the room, 



10 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Sometimes the minister touched mundane affairs 
and spoke of the wicked? or the poor, as of equally 
remote tribes. They were remote, so far as we knew, 
for the standing of our neighbours was never dis- 
cussed. We knew that our mother spent her life in 
a passion of self-sacrifice, ministering to all who were 
in trouble. We knew that she gave to those less 
fortunate, but need was not poverty in our minds. 
And when it came to the poor, I had the same idea 
that I still find so many hold that the poor are a 
different order of beings, subhuman, as well as sub- 
merged. Gaunt, half-clad, with hands outstretched 
for alms, I saw them mentally. 

The minister's voice startled me wide awake: 
" For I was ahungered, and ye gave me no meat ; 
. . . naked, and ye clothed me not — '' he read on 
through the stem condemnation. 

Suppose I died before I encountered any poor to 
visit and to minister to.'^ For years the thought 
hung over me like a threatening shadow. 

Of those grim monsters with whom I was one day 
to do battle — Poverty, Vice, Disease, I had met but 
one — Disease. Typhoid was a yearly scourge in 
the country. Consumption claimed certain families, 
in which it was " hereditary." Yet even Disease and 
Death I had seen only at a distance, like grey-robed 







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THE SHELTERED LIFE 11 

monks performing certain sacred rites, as Providence 
had ordained. 

So it was that the ideal religion of that age and 
the relic of this, personal righteousness rather than 
social service, took hold of my little soul. 

" Blessed are the pure in heart '' crystallised my 
religion. With a passion for white, it meant to me 
all the lovely similitudes of snow-flakes, lilies and 
dew. So, having been told that every evil thing I 
saw or heard would leave a stain upon my soul, and 
with the thought of the large ink spot I once made 
upon my little white dress, I took precautions to 
avoid the deadlier blot. It became a habit to shut 
my eyes and put my fingers in my ears, whenever evil 
occasion required, thinking hard all the time of a 
rose or an icicle. 

The life of the people about us was simple, indeed. 
The farmers' families were hard working and frugal, 
but they were independent, unhurried, thoughtful, 
and had ample time for meditation. 

It was good for us to share in this life, with daily 
household tasks, but we shared it without choice, for 
there were no servants in McCutchanville. Certain 
respected and highly valued neighbours, came to 
clean and to do washings, but the humdrum round 
of every day was divided by the family. With our 



12 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

older sister, Lura, away at college, we children did 
all our mother would allow, growing in grace and 
wisdom thereby. How much Lura's shelf of poets 
helped in those tasks would have surprised those 
ladies and gentlemen. 

It made the butter ^* come '^ faster to chant in 
time to the churn dasher, " Oh, wherefore come-ye 
forth in triumph from-the north," etc. The dreary 
drag of washing dishes lagged less when sped by 
" Hence, loathed Melancholy," or, " Hail to thee, 
blithe spirit." 

There was no fear of our not being practical, 
even though amidst our work Annie scribbled stories 
and I verses with illustrations. I was kept in place 
by sketches that wouldn't come right, by verses that 
refused to convey all I ached to say, and by strug- 
gles with the piano which there was no teacher at 
hand to subdue. If, now and then, I " made up " 
a little song or achieved a line of grace it was just 
enough to feed my persistence. 

There was no influence so practical as our mother. 
There was none so inspiring. As rare as radium, and 
with its power to illuminate, to energise and to heal, 
are such personalities. No one could be in her pres- 
ence long without a quickened sense of responsibility 
and a feeling that he must " amount to something." 
What that " something " was to be was vague to me. 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 13 

Annie, of course, was to be a writer of stories. But 
my own part was dim. My father's theological 
library contained certain biographies that gave dis- 
quieting suggestions. (" Lives of Great Men " are 
like hasheesh to an imaginative child.) Yet a 
" career " never occurred to me, for it would have 
seemed as impossible as walking on the ridge pole or 
driving a locomotive, and as unattractive. 

Sometimes a solemn church tune woke a deep chord 
within me. Sometimes I heard a band play crashing 
martial music with that marching of octaves that 
makes the soul leap to its feet. But mostly the voices 
of the future chimed faint and far away, like bells 
across still waters. Looking across the great sweep 
of the valley to the blue hills, I wondered about the 
world that lay beyond, where the white road led 
away and away. The cities — the poets who lived 
there — the beauty one could learn to know and to 
create. 

A sudden determination seized me to go to an art 
university. Then, one day, I went out of the big 
gate, down the white road, out into the world, and 
never came back again to stay. On and on I went, 
till the wonderland of childhood was left behind. 
After a while the hills grew steeper, but there were 
green fields all along, on both sides. Then, all of a 
sudden, the road forked. On one hand, a very lonely 



14 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

path led off up a hill to the city of the art uni- 
versity. On the other hand, a charming lane beck- 
oned — no, it was a charming man who beckoned. 

We two went on down the lane, till we came to a 
cottage — but this is not a romance. It is exclu- 
sively a story about the evolution of a housing re- 
former, and romance has no more to do with housing 
reform than moonlight has to do with raising pota- 
toes. Only, it is best to plant them in the dark of 
the moon. 

The point is that the cottage was on the road to 
the place where I began housing reform, though 
neither of us dreamed of such a thing. In fact, if I 
hadn't had a home of my own, I would never have 
known or cared so much about other homes. And 
if I hadn't had a husband, I wouldn't have dared try 
housing reform, and couldn't have carried it through. 

From the country school I had gone to the city 
high school, where I learned nothing but books. 
Even going to and from school, across the town, I 
learned nothing of the town or the people who lived 
in it, for theorems and conjugations were written in 
the air, in front of me, so that this period has really 
nothing to do with the story. 

After my graduation, my mother's dear and 
revered uncle. Judge Asa Igleheart, wanted me to be 
his private secretary. 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 15 

Tn SIX weeks I had learned shorthand alone, and 
gone to my uncle to write out his letters and briefs 
at dictation, to handle his law books, even to report 
special cases in court, and to have the privilege of 
his companionship. No college course could have 
been more valuable to me. Not the least of value was 
learning to write business letters, to make up court 
records, to go without fright into public buildings, 
to keep my own counsel, and to avoid feminine flut- 
terings. And, from being sometimes the only lady 
in a full court room, I had learned to " see men as 
trees walking," with perfect forgetfulness of them 
and of myself. 

To be sure, my uncle and his sons in the office had 
protected me just as my mother had done. But 
every one had been kind, courtesy unfailing, and 
chivalry ever ready. I had emerged, after a few 
years of this schooling, with a sincere appreciation 
of business and professional methods, and with a 
glowing faith in mankind. It was these results that 
gave me courage, later, to take up public work. 

At the close of this period sister Annie and I had 
gone abroad, to visit relatives. The only result of 
the trip, so far as this story is concerned, was that 
I loved my own "rocks and rills" better (after a 
foreign Fourth of July) and I had become more than 
ever anxious to study art. Which spoils the sequence 



16 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

of the story only, and not of my life, because I 
changed my mind. 

We began housekeeping in a pretty home in a 
pretty part of the town. I had thought I could not 
bear to live in a city again, but our home was near 
the edge of town, where the houses were far apart, 
and every one had his own individual air to breathe. 
All the houses were roomy and comfortable. All the 
lawns were large, with many trees and flowers. We 
had rows of sweet peas and beds of mignonette. 
There was a red-bird in our climbing rose and robins 
were all about. I didn't miss the country as much as 
I had expected, and decided that the town had many 
advantages, especially as every one had city water 
and sewerage. 

Every one! 

AH my friends lived on pretty streets, and my 
shopping was done in the best business blocks, so I 
did not have to see much of the rest of the town. 
When we drove, we never went through the factory 
district where the working men's cottages were, but 
chose the boulevards, along the river or the parks, 
or took the country roads. 

One day, driving down by the river with a maiden 
lady who was interested in mission classes and fac- 
tory people, I stopped to let her enjoy the view. 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 17 

It was a lovely scene, taking In the bend of the river, 
and the lower part of town, with churches, factories 
and houses all blended together in a softened hazy 
whole — just like my idea of it. 

" What a beautiful world this is," I exclaimed with 
enthusiasm. 

" Yes, it is — to some people," answered my 
friend, seriously. 

Looking at her suddenly, I noticed the thin grey 
hair on her sunken temples, and the lines about her 
eyes. No doubt her life had been embittered by dis- 
appointment. I resolved that I was not going to be 
soured, and that I would exclude every ugly or 
blighting thing from my life. In other words, I 
would keep on shutting my eyes and putting my 
fingers in my ears, as I did when a child. Yet there 
was no need to do that. There were so many happy 
and pleasant things in the new life, what room was 
there for anything else? My husband, my house- 
keeping, flowers, music, reading, my friends, and a 
pleasant social round, filled up the hours. An oppor- 
tunity offered to study art with a good teacher. 
Then followed cooking lessons, as the little maid, 
though a stimulating subject to sketch, was not so 
good as a cook. The cooking lessons were as ex- 
citing as a new game. There was aesthetic pleasure. 



18 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

too, in making ruby and amber jelly, delicately 
browned bread, salad and charlotte russe — but 
enough. 

When the two children came, Margaret, and then 
Albion, all else became secondary, as every one who 
ever saw them would expect. They were really so 
wonderful that it is dijSicult to keep this narrative 
from becoming a family chronicle. It must suffice to 
say that in all I ever did, thereafter, they had a part, 
in my arms, in my heart, or in my company. 

There was one long while that I could not hold 
them in my arms. The house was hushed and dark- 
ened, and the servants went about with noiseless 
steps. For months I was very ill. Then, for nearly 
a year, I dragged about, white and thin as " snaw 
wreaths in the thaw," weary, listless, indifferent, with 
no special interest in anything but my family. 

For hours I would sit idly, not making an effort 
even to read, content to rest my cheek upon a golden 
head. It seemed as if the wheels of Kfe had sud- 
denly stopped, and I had no ambition to set them 
running again. I never went to look down the White 
Road, for I had a feeling that there was a great wall 
across it. Nervous prostration does that. It was 
two years before I took any interest in people, two 
more before the shadow of the eclipse had wholly 
moved off my world. It was eight years at least 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 19 

before all my energy and enthusiasm and joy of liv- 
ing returned. 

There were some wheels that had to be kept run- 
ning, for the domestic routine must go on. The 
problem of managing servants became a weary one 
in my semi-invalidism. But when one has less 
strength and courage, one must have more patience 
and philosophy. I found " Marcus Aurelius " an in- 
valuable help in domestic problems, and nerved myself 
for many a descent upon the kitchen by sitting down 
with him for half an hour. How generously he over- 
looked, as well as how stoically he endured ! It took 
a whole hour of " Marcus Aurelius " for Meena, my 
most valuable cook, whose temper reminded me of the 
big dog of my childhood. One trying treasure, 
Barbara, could be reduced to tameness by the strains 
of her favourite air, " O Tannenbaum.'' I tried 
playing it softly when a tempest raged in the kitchen. 
Gradually the banging grew less, then hushed, and a 
smiling Barbara appeared in the doorway to express 
her thanks. " Flow Gently, Sweet Afton " had un- 
failing effect upon Elsie, who had been ruffled by 
many storms of life. 

I often wondered why all my best cooks had either 
chronic ailments or bad dispositions, and why all my 
nurses had family troubles. They made heavy drains 
upon my sympathy, for one could not help but be 



20 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

interested in all their troubles. In return, they con- 
tributed to my education, teaching me human nature, 
patience, sympathy, some executive ability and much 
diplomacy, things necessary for a housing reformer 
to possess. 

I found that the girls who came to me could not 
be managed according to any ideas of servants as a 
class, for they had more points of difference than 
of similarity. For instance, they were not all poor, 
or even in need of working for a living. Katy's 
father owned a 400-acre farm. They were not all 
ignorant. One nurse had taught school, and used 
most careful participles. Some were coarse who had 
had fair advantages. But Lucindy, the poorest and 
most ignorant, who came from a backwoods cabin — 
and always would say that she " squoze the lemon " 
and ^^ slum the door '* — had the most innate refine- 
ment of any of them. Gentle, low-voiced, sweet and 
considerate, she was a lady to the core. I took espe- 
cial pains to train her, for these reasons. 

As strength returned, it brought new interest in 
life. A Dante club, a Browning circle, even a psy- 
chology class, in turn became tempting. When at 
last the paints and brushes were brought out, it 
showed a complete restoration, and the whole family 
posed in various attitudes of joy. Society became 
again a pleasure, and life was full to the brim. Too 



THE SHELTERED LIFE 21 

full to crowd another thing into it, I told the com- 
mittee from the charities organisation who came to 
enlist my aid. (The poor — that old threatening 
shadow again ! I had almost forgotten about them.) 

" We are glad to give," I said, eagerly, " but I 
don't know anything about that kind of work, and I 
think it is better for those more experienced to do 
it.'' 

There were plenty more excuses for my enthusi- 
astic friends who came to interest me in civic im- 
provement. How well I remembered (and smiled) 
when those same excuses were made to me later. 
When I was asked to take a hand in some vice prob- 
lem I was too indignant to make any excuses. Dur- 
ing all my childhood in the country I had heard of 
only one girl who had gone wrong- It wasn't spoken 
of, out loud, but I saw stern faces, and heard whis- 
pers, though I never fully understood and the mys- 
tery made the horror only greater. That horror 
haunted the whole subject to such a degree that I 
had always refused to hear or know anything about 
it. Even newspapers and modern fiction could not 
dislocate my blinders. If, after carefully choosing 
a book, the turning of a page disclosed an unex- 
pected " problem " or ugly suggestion, I threw it 
from me in disgust, as I would a fine peach with a 
worm in it. As to newspapers, I read the poetry 



22 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

first, skimmed the head lines, and skipped the politics, 
turning under the crimes and accidents. 

" It's a shame the papers are so full of unpleasant 
stuff," I complained petulantly. " If I can't help 
these people and make things better, I don't want to 
know about them." If I happened by accident on 
evil, I would say, " Oh, but that's not our kind of 
people." 

" Sheltered " — that is what I was, and what thou- 
sands of other women are who have not seen life and 
who do not want to see it as it really is. First, their 
mothers and fathers shelter them, and then their 
husbands shelter them, and they have no idea of the 
want and misery and wrong in the world that could 
be prevented and that they might help prevent. Once 
in a whUe there is a case like " My Little Sister," but 
it doesn't happen often among people we know. 

And so sheltered women go on, sleep-walking, over 
trestles and dangerous places, sometimes with babies 
in their arms. 

And the ones who are not sheltered — ! 

But if there were not other sleep walkers, there 
would have been less reason for writing this story. 

Also, if I had not been awakened I could not be 
writing it. And the rest of the story is about the 
awakening. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SHADOW 

MOTHERHOOD ^ 

For two dear heads of bronze and amber. 

For baby eyes of blue and brown. 
For two who clasp and kiss and clamber. 

And on my shoulder nestle down* 

All little hearts are dearer to me,, 

All little faces sweet and bright. 
All childish woes and griefs undo me. 

And I would heal them all to-night. 

— A. F. B. 

One day our youngest child came home from school 
with a troubled face. " Mamma," she said, hesitat- 
ingly, " I wish you'd write a note to the teacher to 
change my seat, or else not to let Harry catch hold 
of my hand. He sits right across the aisle from me, 
and he's lots bigger, and he bothers me. I don't like 
him." 

I went at once to the school and found that Harry 
was a boy too old for his grade, backward on account 
of truancy, and that he was incorrigible, having been 
twice to reform school for housebreaking. And he 
sat across from my little girl, and had been seizing 

iFrom "Songs Ysame.'' 



U BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

her hand ! Harry was duly moved and reproved, but 
I did not feel satisfied. Looking over the room I did 
not see much choice of seats among the children there. 

" I don't mind 'em being poor, mamma," said the 
child, " but I can't bear to sit close when they're not 
clean. It makes me sick." 

In each row of seats were two or three prim little 
girls, immaculate as daisies, with shining curls and 
spotless frocks. Scattered among them sat a num- 
ber of boys, whose hair still showed fresh brush marks, 
and whose faces, necks and ears were still pink from 
the morning scouring, though showing recent streaks. 
Walking up the aisle I saw that all their waists were 
clean in the back, though rumpled in front. 

"Fresh this morning, anyhow," I thought, recog- 
nising the small sons of my friends. 

Distributed among these well-cared-for children 
were boys whose shaggy hair stood on end, and who 
showed no signs of recent washing. Their waists 
were soiled and rumpled all over. There were little 
girls, too, with rough hair tied with faded strings of 
ribbon, who wore coarse, ill-fitting dresses. They 
were cleaner than the boys, but their complexions 
had a greyish hue that might come off and might not. 
I remembered having been told of one child who had 
been kept in at recess for not getting her lesson, and 



THE SHADOW 25 

then she confessed that she couldn't study because 
she was faint from want of food. 

Looking over the room I forgot my errand, and a 
great wave of pity swept over me for the children 
who didn't have the same chance as mine and my 
friends' children had. 

Going home, with my little girls skipping at each 
side of me, I surveyed the school grounds. They 
were covered with cinders and broken rock. 

" This is what roughs up our shoes so, and skins 
our knees when we fall down," said one of the children. 

" And see here," exclaimed the other, " what the 
boys throw at each other." 

It was a pile of decayed vegetables, chicken heads, 
and other garbage at the back of a grocery opposite 
the school yard. 

" The boys play here, and we play in the street, 
on the other side," the child said. " We don't like to 
play on the cinders, and there's no place else to play 
but the street. And that's how Mamie came to be 
run over by a cart the other day." 

It was enough to make any mother distracted and 
Indignant. The shame of it, with so much vacant 
land around the school building! 

On the way home I stopped to take counsel with 
my mother and my sister Lura, whose children went 



26 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

to the same school. I walked home with a new gleam 
in my eye and a new determination in my step. 

That afternoon I had a long talk with some of 
the leaders of the Civic Improvement Association, 
whose children went to the same school. A few days 
later a small procession, led by J. E. Iglehart (my 
lawyer cousin), and composed of the Civic Improve- 
ment leaders and other young mothers besides my- 
self, walked into the city building and up to the 
office of the city attorney. 

If the city attorney should confirm our hope that 
the title of the city was clear to the old canal bed, 
which formed the site of the school building in ques- 
tion, there would be a large tract available for play- 
ground purposes, and we were there to prove that it 
should be used in that way. Mr. Igleheart stated 
our mission, and there was some discussion, in which 
the ladies took an animated part. I had expected to 
remain in the background, but, with some surprise 
and confusion, I found myself taking a hand in the 
argument. 

It was like a plunge through ice into freezing 
water. But — the ice was broken, and I was initi- 
ated into civic work ! We were given slight encour- 
agement, and left the city building, disappointed, to 
plan the next step. After much further effort and 
agitation, in which I was not able to take part, th^ 



THE SHADOW 27 

matter came to a definite settlement, a goodly tract 
was added to the school grounds, and the whole 
fenced in and improved. And so our eiffort bore 
late fruit. 

While the matter was pending, my children took 
sick with scarlet fever. The elder one caught it 
first, and then the younger one, and Lucindy, who 
had been promoted from nurse to cook, came down 
with it. 

"Was there scarlet fever in school?" 

The little patient thought there was. Some of 
the children had been absent. Jennie, who sat be- 
hind her, had been sick and had little red spots on 
her. Had any of the others? Not just the same. 
One of the Fourth Street children had funny looking 
sores, and some of the others got some afterwards, 
just like them. Minnie had another kind, awful look- 
ing, on her mouth, and the teacher told her she must 
have her own drinking-cup. Celie was out, but that 
was at her mother's funeral. Her mother died of 
consumption, and Celie said she guessed she had it, 
too, 'cause she coughed all the time. 

I telephoned my friends that I was ready to serve 
on the sanitation committee of the Civic Improvement 
Society as soon as the flag was taken off the house. 
At that time having no conception of what the poorer 
school children's homes were like, I had only a vague 



28 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

idea as to what should be done. But " sanitation '' 
had a remedial sound, and something was wrong, and 
I wanted to take hold somewhere. 

Before the flag was taken off, however, there were 
many anxious days of nursing. As I look back over 
the years when the children were still ^' catching 
things," it seems to me that much of the time was 
spent in the nursery, bending over a little white bed, 
bathing hot, restless little hands, and doing all those 
things that a mother cannot willingly resign to a 
nurse. 

There were anxious vigils that lasted till the grey 
dawn, vigils when the city slept and the house was 
still, and Night seemed to lean in at the windows, 
breathless, to listen to a little fluttering heartbeat. 

In such hours the values of life are fixed. 

When the household came down off^ tiptoe and con- 
valescence ended, there had to be a round of lessons, 
for the children were afraid of falling behind in their 
classes. To give fresh interest to their books, we 
made games of lessons, and lessons of games, and, 
though we cut them to the shortest possible time, the 
children never forgot what they studied in those 
weeks. We put the remaining hours upon those 
things for which the schools had no time, which, in 
fact, the mother can teach better than any one else 
— all that lies outside of the text book, all that 



THE SHADOW 29 

teaches children to live, to do, to think, to see, to 
■hear. There were many practical things to teach, 
and much domestic lore, but there was also nature 
lore, wonder lore, spirit lore, handed down in legend, 
myth or ballad, from the earliest tribal life. As 
Ole Luk Oie set the feet of the little Hjalmar 
into the picture on the wall, I felt in duty bound to 
set the feet of my children into that realm of beauty 
that lay all about us. No fear of their not learn- 
ing the hard, practical things. The world sees to 
that! But the world would not teach them to see 
gold in sunshine and diamonds in dew. 

When the children went back to school the house 
was so lonely that I was glad to have some outside 
interest, to take up even a small part of my leisure. 
It gave a pleasant sense of light responsibility to be 
on the sanitation committee of the Civic Improvement 
Society and, of course, one had to take an inter- 
est in the whole city when one was publicly held re- 
sponsible, even in a small way. Hitherto, when I 
passed, an alley, I had turned my head so as not to 
see the disagreeable things of which the smells warned 
me. Now, I stopped and looked up the alley and 
sniffed ; stopped long enough to notice the dark, slimy 
streams slowly trickling down the middle of the alley, 
the papers, tin cans, and old shoes scattered about, 
the garbage cans at shed doors. Sometimes I saw 



so BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

little children darting to and fro, and wondered at 
their being in the alley. It never entered my mind 
that they could live there. 

Another thing marked a mental change. Instead 
of looking for the poetry first in magazines and 
papers I hunted up articles on sanitation, house 
flies, etc., and even read bits of local politics. In 
fact, I not only learned who was secretary of our 
Board of Health, but became acquainted with him 
through his lively interest in our sanitation com- 
mittee. 

That summer I read " How the Other Half Lives." 
I followed it with " The Battle with the Slum '' and 
" The Making of an American." When I finished, 
my mind was a saturated solution of slums. Those 
vivid pictures set forth by Jacob Riis left such an 
indelible impression that they always remain as a 
dark background to all the scenes of poverty I was 
to know later. 

I remember reading, one August day, his story of 
a hot night in the East Side tenements, the pitiful 
sufferings of babies, and the way people slept out 
on the pavements and fire escapes. 

Lifting my eyes to the cool green and gold of the 
nasturtium vines that darkened the room pleasantly, 
I looked out upon the shady lawn where the children 
were laughing over their soap bubbles. How glad 



THESHADOW 31 

I was that we didn't live in a great city with crowded 
tenements I 

One day I was passing a shabby little hotel, near 
Main Street, with the children. One of them glanced 
up, waved and called " Hi, Sadie." Looking up 
quickly I saw at a window a little black-haired girl, 
with snapping bright eyes. Beside her leaned a 
stout, coarse-looking woman, with large earrings and 
heavy bracelets. 

"Who on earth is that child, and how did you 
come to know her? " I demanded. 

^^Why, she's one of the girls in my class. Isn't 
she pretty? And she's smart, too, even if she does 
use funny words. She's been begging me to come 
and play with her some day. May I ? " 

" No ! " I answered, with vehemence, taking note 
of coUarless loungers chewing and smoking about the 
entrance to a bar. There were negroes lounging 
around, too, and I remembered that my husband had 
said it was a " tough place," and a resort of river 
men of the lower class. 

It was sickening to think of my little girl In such 
an environment, even for a moment. I wondered 
how many more of her schoolmates lived in similar 
places. I had not then any definite idea of the vice 
that would harbour in such a place, but there seemed 
to be an intangible, contaminating something, a pal- 



32 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

pable Shadow overhanging, and I hurried the chil- 
dren away from it. 

[" A few days later I drove down past the heart of 
town, near one of the railroad stations, to hunt for 
Aunt Lindy, an old coloured washwoman who had 
moved. I found her sitting in the door of a dilapi- 
dated rear dwelling that faced a dirty alley, looking 
so out of place, in her white turban and spotless 
apron, that I could but express my surprise. 
" Yas'm," she said, bobbing up, " I sho' do feel mis- 
placed, but I'se fixin' to move agin jes' as soon as I 
kin fine a bettah house." 

How often I was to hear those words again ! 

Through the open door I could see the neat bed 
and the clean bare floor. But flakes of soot were 
falling like black snow, clouds of dust poured in from 
the street, and the slime of the alley ran to her very 
doorstep. 

" I don't see how you manage to keep everything 
so clean," I said. 

" I wuks nm fingahs off^, dat's how," she responded, 
and poured out her disgust for the miserable place. 
Six families fought over one cistern, there was no 
place to pour the suds but into the alley, by the 
doors ; a cesspool reeked by her window, rats overran 
the place, bad neighbours fought and caroused, peo- 
ple were sick in all the houses, and so on. While she 



THE SHADOW 33 

talked, I gazed up the alley, where pickaninnies were 
hopping over garbage pails with white children of 
their own age. A meanly dressed white woman, with 
a basket, came down the alley, turned to look at us, 
and entered the next house. As she turned, I no- 
ticed the peculiar scar across her lowering face, and 
recognised a woman who had come begging to my door 
a few days before. 

So here was where some of " the poor '' lived ! 

Just then the door opened again, and a shabby 
little girl came out. She picked her way toward 
us over the muddy cobblestones. Her hair was a 
bleached tan colour, matching her skin, and she wore 
a faded cotton dress. In her hand she carried an 
earthen pitcher. She passed straight by us, across 
the street, and in at the back door of a saloon. 

" They's awful f olks,'^ whispered Aunt Lindy, 
noting the look on my face. 

When she brought my bundle of laundry I was 
amazed to see the snowy miracle she had wrought, 
in such a place. Yet who knows what germs may be 
lurking in those folds, I thought, reminded oddly of 
the " tears that need washing and repentance that 
needs repenting of." 

As I left the alley there came over me that depress- 
ing feeling I had in the neighbourhood of the 
river hotel. I wiped the black alley mud off my 



84 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

feet, as an outward sign of that indefinite contami- 
nation, but the Shadow clung to me and followed me, 
just as did the fotul smells of the alley. At my door 
I again wiped my feet and shook the folds of my 
dress, laying the bundle outside on the veranda in 
the sunshine. In the same mood I washed my hands 
and face, still possessed of the idea that I had brought 
into my house some of the evil of the alley. 

One who has been given sight by an operation sees 
gradually, as the bandages are removed. First, a 
glimmer of light, then dim masses and outlines, and 
then, little by little, vision becomes clear. The band- 
ages were being taken off my eyes, but so slowly that, 
standing there in the alley, I had seen but dimly the 
autlines of evil. Except for the glimpse of Aunt 
Lindy's clean room, I had seen no interior of those 
alley dwellings. And except for her talk of their 
drinking and fighting, I had no idea of the vice that 
she doubtless referred to in lowered voice. 

All this time I had been feeling that if I could 
take part in civic work it was only right that I should 
also do some " church work." So when a committee 
of ladies asked me to help with an Easter bazaar I 
entered into their plans heartily. For a week I 
painted Easter cards and made egg-shell favours. 
Then I helped in the bazaar and finished much ex- 
hausted and somewhat puzzled. 



THE SHADOW 35 

" I can't think of Christ as being on a committee," 
I confessed to my husband, " or as giving us that 
kind of work to do. I felt I needed a spiritual tonic, 
and I thought some such work would build me up, 
but it didn't seem to suit my case,'' 

Then, with a sudden curiosity, I seized my Bible, 
and began turning over its pages to see what Christ 
had said about work being spiritual " meat." How 
much stress He laid on " serving " ! And how strictly 
he enjoined upon us the care of the poor! 

" If I am ever going to visit the poor, now is the 
time to begin," I said aloud. 

One afternoon at a tea I met Miss Caroline Rein, 
secretary of our Charities Organisation. 

" Oh, Miss Rein," I exclaimed, " you're just the 
one I want to see. I want to know where to find 
some poor families, so I can visit them in their homes. 
Won't you take me to see some of them? " 

She looked at me with shining eyes for a moment. 

*^ Why, Mrs. Bacon, is it possible.^ I've just been 
longing to find some one who wants to visit my 
families*. You see, I want to organise a Friendly 
Visitors' circle. Of course, I will take you." 

" And can I go to-morrow? " 

She smiled at my eagerness. " Yes, to-morrow," 
she answered. 

She was waiting for me at her oflSce next morning. 



36 BEAUTY EOR ASHES 

We took a .street car and rode through the business 
part of town into the factory district on the other 
side of the city. 

I looked at the houses with new interest. There 
were blocks and blocks of nondescript houses, most 
of them ugly, the majority of them dingy, 
some much worse than others, but I wouldn't have 
looked for " the poor " in any of them. Here and 
there were neat, nice looking ones, with good fences 
in front. Some of the unpainted houses had fences 
with broken or missing palings, like jagged teeth. 
The shabby houses looked unnecessarily shabby from 
the need of paint, and resembled people prematurely 
grey, who have seen trouble, and have lived hard, 
sordid lives. 

^' We haven't any slums in Evansville, have we ? " 
I ventured. " Not the real sure enough ones, with 
those terrible conditions that Jacob Riis writes about 
in New York? " 

" Yes," answered Miss Rein, thoughtfully, " we 
have very bad conditions, real slums, I think," she 
said slowly ; " it is safe to say that we have, in a 
lesser degree, every bad condition that you will 
'find in the slums of New York, except the conges- 
tion." 

This was more than fifteen years ago, when it was 
commonly accepted that only great cities had slums. 




O 



k^^^-\%>fj^-... 



THE SHADOW 37 

Yet this clear-eyed woman saw our conditions and 
realised their significance. 

Leaving the car, we walked several blocks toward 
the river, crossed a network of railroad tracks, and 
turned in at a big gate to what seemed to be a park. 

" This is Old St. Mary's,'' said Miss Rein, "one of 
the largest tenements in the city." 

It had been the old marine hospital, at one time 
'a fine building, and stood in a noble space of ground 
that sloped down to the river. There were great 
trees on the grounds, but the shrubbery had run 
wild, and made a jungle with the tall grass and weeds. 

We approached the building in company with a 
dozen ragged, dirty children, who met us at the gate. 
On the broad flight of worn steps were ranged other 
children, equally dirty and ragged, mostly barefooted, 
even the babies. A half-dozen untidy women stood 
about on the old piazza, with babies in their arms 
or dragging at their skirts. Ragged quilts and old 
clothing hung to air on the railings. Old men, rough 
and unshaven, lounged in the sun, chewing or smok- 
ing. Frowsy heads were thrust out at windows along 
the piazza, as women leaned their elbows on the sills 
and surveyed us frankly. There was no hostility 
in the stare. Miss Rein was an old friend, and when 
she introduced me as her friend they vied in hospi- 
tality, dusted chairs and offered them. Little dirty 



38 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

hands were tucked into Miss Rein's, or tugged at her 
dress, to draw her away to " our room." For each 
family had but one room ! I remembered that Jacob 
Riis said the one-room slum was the very worst of 
all, and New York once boasted that it had none of 
them. 

There were more babies in the wide, dirty hall and 
on the big central stairway that rose to the third 
floor. Half-clad boys were sliding down the banis- 
ters and girls of all sizes, hair in eyes, stood looking 
on. By the first inner doorway an idiot boy was sit- 
ting on the floor, helpless as a baby. He looked up 
with a sickening leer as we entered, holding out de- 
formed knobs of hands. 

Miss Rein took a proffered chair, and I followed 
her example, trying to seem not to be looking at 
anything, yet seeing all. Seeing! The word is too 
passive. Sights and smells rose and assaulted me, 
choked and gashed me, and the scars remain yet. 
They will remain until my dying day. 

I had never dreamed that people lived like that in 
our city. Since then I have seen places much worse, 
for these rooms were large and airy, and had not the 
horror of darkness and dampness. But it was the 
first time I had taken a square look at Poverty, and 
its sordid misery, its bare ugliness, were overpower- 
ing. 



THE SHADOW 39 

The first Impression of the rooms was of bareness 
and disorder, the next of a general greyness and 
scarred roughness of the old walls and uncovered 
floors. Every room had its " safe," its beds, and 
its cook stove, upon which was boiling coffee or cab- 
bage, and often a kettle of wash. There were coarse 
dishes and coarse food upon the mean tables, but 
no sign of a table-cloth anywhere. Many of the beds 
had no sheets, only a filthy ticking; on some lay a 
sick child, with flies thick upon its face. Old cloth- 
ing lay about in piles, or hung from large nails driven 
into the cracked plastering. Not one line or spot 
of beauty was there in all that mass of hopeless ugli- 
ness. 

And the people had the same hopeless look, not 
a gleam of inspiration on a single face. Some were 
sad, more were sullen. There was a curious simi- 
larity in their expression and in their clothing that 
corresponded to the rooms, and made all seem under 
the same blighting spell. There was not the least 
attempt at privacy. Children swarmed in and out, 
men and women put their heads in at the door, heavy 
feet passed noisily down the corridor; boys fought 
on the stairway ; old hags scolded, babies cried. To 
think of living amid all that ! 

A young girl with great starry eyes went down- 
stairs with us, hushing the clamour of the children 



40 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

as she went. I could but notice the grace of her 
slender figure that her coarse gown could not con- 
ceal. 

We left her at the steps and went on down the 
grass-grown drive. " She is just back from the re- 
form school," said Miss Rein simply. 

Near the gate the long arm of an old scraggly 
rose bush caught my gown and held me fast. Bend- 
ing to undo it, I noticed a delicate bud, half unfolded, 
but worm eaten, whose imperfect beauty reminded 
me of the young girl we had just left. I did not 
know then that the sorrows of the poor had laid 
hold upon my heart, as with the clutch of thorns. 

We walked on in a silence full of unspoken ques- 
tions that crashed and roared against my ear drums. 

" We have another visit to make, if you can stand 
it,'' said Miss Rein quietly, and I nodded assent. 

I had little idea of how far we walked until we 
stopped at a long low brick house. The building was 
flush with the pavement, the floor on the same level. 
Several open doorways ofl^ered entrance. The doors 
were either missing or sagging against the wall. 
Here the same general impressions rushed out to 
meet me, the mean, shabby ugliness of the place, the 
overwhelming number of women and children, who 
boiled over out of every window and door, even onto 
the pavement, in a most surprising way. I felt 



THE SHADOW 41 

somehow that the dinginess related people to house, 
as if either it shared their human deterioration, or 
they its physical decay — which was it? 

A problem formulated in the back of my mind: 
" Let the people be represented by P and the house 
by H; would their condition be expressed by P^ or 
jjpp J5 rpj^g absurd idea stayed in my subconscious- 
ness, and gave me a grudge against the house, as if 
it were a cause of the misery of the people. 

There was no time to work out any problems, 
because we were so soon inside, looking down into a 
half dozen pairs of round bright eyes. I reached out 
my hand to steady one toddling baby going down 
the uneven step, and to pat another that put its 
little grey hand on my knee, and looked up confid- 
ingly into my face. They were grey all over, those 
babies, from creeping about the dirty floors, and 
out on the dusty pavement; faces, bands, bare feet 
and clothes grey, like the stray kittens that patrolled 
our ash bins. 

Detaching ourselves from group after group, I fol- 
lowed Miss Rein up the shaky stairs. Out on a 
rickety back porch a woman was washing. One 
could see at a glance that she was different from the 
bold-faced women downstairs. There was an air of 
refinement about her and about her sweet-faced 
daughter, who was helping her^ 



42 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

As we stood and talked, I looked down into the 
back yard, littered with broken crockery, cinders and 
tin cans, and strewn with garbage, over which hov- 
ered swarms of flies. There were clumps of great 
weeds, as high as a man's head, and among them 
puddles of old suds. In one place a slimy stream 
oozed away to the alley. Dilapidated sheds stood at 
the rear of the yard. A sickening odour of old vaults, 
sour suds and decayed garbage rose to our nostrils. 

" We must get some decent place to move to," the 
woman was saying, with tears in her eyes. " It's 
awful here. We've always lived in the country, and 
here we are right on the street, where we hear people 
passing by, and there are so many that go by here 
cursing and swearing. The men come in drunk at 
all hours of the night. There's no lock on the door. 
We push the bed against it, but we're too frightened 
to sleep. And then, these hot nights, that dreadful 
smell comes up from the yard and we have to shut 
the window. My God, such a place ! " 

In one of the rooms downstairs a boy was lying 
ill with tuberculosis. His burning eyes turned sol- 
emnly upon us, as we entered, and held us with their 
gaze. To my relief Miss Rein did not sit down, but 
stood a moment, talking with the old mother. How 
hard that miserable cot must be, I thought, noticing 
the thin lumpy mattress, and the emaciation of the 




xi 

PL, 

u 

o 

a 



THE SHADOW 43 

boy, as he raised on his elbow to cough. An unmis- 
takeable odour of mould filled the room. 

"Aren't those floors damp? " I asked the mother. 

For answer she raised a piece of old carpet, white 
with mould, and showed me where the floor had rotted 
through until the wet earth beneath was visible. 

Once out on the street, I turned to Miss Rein. 

" Do those people have to live that way ? " I 
asked. " Couldn't they fix things up and make them 
better and more decent ? " 

" It's little they could do," she replied. " They 
can't afi^ord paint or wall paper. They can't aff^ord 
tools or lumber to repair with, and they are too un- 
skilled to use them, if they had them. They are too 
poor to have the trash and ashes hauled away, and, 
of course, the yard was full when they moved in. 
Besides, these houses need more than a few simple 
repairs. So many families use one cistern that wa- 
ter is scarce, and there is no place to pour the waste 
water except in the yard or in the alley. But why 
should these people be expected to repair the house 
any more than other tenants, especially as it was out 
of repair when they took it? It's the landlord's duty 
to make it fit to live in." 

" Then, why don't the landlords attend to these 
things ? " I asked. " Have you told them how bad 
they are ? " 



44 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

" Yes/' she answered, " but they refuse to do any- 
thing, and there's no law by which they can be forced 
to." 

Then the whole situation was hopeless. But it 
seemed to me that the people who were making laws 
and attending to such things ought to see about that 
law. 

I went home with bowed head and lagging feet, 
seeing before me all the time those awful rooms, those 
babies of the slums. My children were on the steps, 
and I gathered them both into my arms, with a deep 
sob. Then I held them back, to look at them. Oh, 
the wonder of their clear white skin, their shining 
hair, their soft white dresses! What if — ! 

I drew them close again, as if they had just es- 
caped some dreadful doom. 

At night I sang bedtime songs a long while, after 
the light was turned out and the fire burned low. 
When they were asleep I went out and tried to read, 
but the scenes of the day came between me and the 
page like a palpable shadow. 

Several times in the night I got up and went to 
the children, to smooth their hair and their limbs, 
and feel of their soft garments. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 

My first visit to the poor haunted me. The smell of 
those close rooms would come to me suddenly. At 
times the recollection of their scarred grey walls 
almost produced a momentary illusion of cracks and 
scars starting out upon my own walls, until I brushed 
my hand over my eyes and looked again. Just as 
the vanishing view of a stereopticon makes a com- 
posite picture with the succeeding view, so the rooms 
of the poor seemed to blend with mine. 

And the burning eyes of the sick child danced upon 
the page when I tried to read. At night, lying 
awake, a recollection of the consumptive on his mis- 
erable bed in the damp room would bring an actual 
shiver of cold, and a sudden consciousness of a hard 
lump — that wasn't there — under my shoulders. 

Then I remembered the rose bush that had reached 

a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and 

caught my dress, detaining me when I would have 

passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came 

over me. These memories and visions of the poor — 

they were the clutch of the thorns. 

Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to 

45 



46 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

their work, because the thorns curve backward, and 
one cannot pull away. 

There was no question about going back to visit 
the poor, and no thought of duty when I went again, 
I was irresistibly drawn by a desire to help. 

With some timidity I took my first family to visit, 
insisting upon Miss Rein's going with me to see that 
I made no mistake. 

" Give me an easy family to start with,'' I begged, 
with a dread of doing an injury if they had problems 
I could not solve. Remembering how I had been 
undone by the tenements, Miss Rein gave me a higher 
class family, in a single house. 

The family consisted of an old German grand- 
mother, her son, who had been ill a long time, and 
his motherless boy of four. They lived across the 
town, in one of a forlorn, shabby row of houses that 
paint and repairs might have made homelike. 

Miss Rein took me to the back door (one gets 
surer entrance that way), and we found a neat little 
old woman at her washtub. With a cordial greeting 
she took us at once to the front room, where her son 
was ill. Thin, white, hollow-eyed, unshaven, he 
looked ghastly enough. I should have been 
" stumped " for a conversational opening, but for 
the wonderful bedquilt with which he was covered. 
It was indeed a work of art, as I knew from my coun- 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 47 

try experiences. My exclamation called its pleased 
author, and she showed me her embroidery and hand- 
made lace. Since then I have always reminded 
nervous beginners in friendly visiting to look for bed- 
quilts and " tidies." 

The little four-year-old, with sunny curls and seri- 
ous eyes, made more conversation. But, with a fear 
of hurting some open wound, I let Miss Rein do most 
of the talking. 

The next visit was easy. *^ She needs just a friend 
to look after her a bit, for there is no one she can 
turn to in that neighbourhood," said Miss Rein. 
" The Charity Organisation will see that all her 
needs are supplied, and you must never take any- 
thing you would not take to your own friends — only 
books, delicacies, flowers, and such things. Alms are 
forbidden to Friendly Visitors. It spoils the effect 
of the work." 

Yet it seemed very little to do, just to carry a pot 
of flowers, a delicate lunch, or even some toys for the 
child. We were good friends from the start, and 
they begged me to come often. It seemed to be a 
relief to her to tell her troubles — the damp cellar, 
the undrained yard, the noisy, quarrelsome neigh- 
bours, whose garbage and flies vexed her housewifeljr 
spirit. 

She told me of her happier days, of her girlhood 



48 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

in a little German dorf, where her father was the 
wealthy man of the village. Then followed her mar- 
riage, the trip to America, illness, loss. ^' Und now 
dies is alles I got left," she said, brokenly. 

She talked of her church, the Evangelical. " My 
son can't go no more, now, und he ask me to sing der 
hymns, but I can't no more, mit der cough. I vish 
he could hear dem yet." 

By a happy chance " Ein' Feste Burg " and some 
old German ballads had stayed with me, and I sang 
them as to the children, at bedtime. The sick man 
looked at his mother and smiled wanly. She smiled 
back, though a tear was on her cheek. And the 
child on her knee looked wonderingly at them both. 

*' It makes one vergessen all der troubles, nicht 
wahr? " she said. Then they talked of the old days, 
again, and she took from a wooden chest the holiday 
dress of her girlhood. She had never shown it to 
" dese vimmens." But I " vas different, and cared." 
" Yes, I do care," I said heartily. 

When we had the first meeting of our Friendly 
Visitors' Circle, and each member told her experi- 
ences, I realised how complex might be the problems 
with which we had to deal, and how much, besides 
alms, a poor family might need. And this became 
more and more apparent as I visited other families. 

It looked hard-hearted and impossible, at first, that 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 49 

we should visit the needy and seem to ignore their lack 
of money, even though we sent alms to them through 
the Charities. But we found that the poor suffer 
for other things, much more than for money. They 
need guidance, protection, care, advice; in fact, 
money is often their least need. " And if they once 
fasten their eyes upon your pocket, they are so apt 
never to see any higher," Miss Rein said. " To give 
material help is so often like giving a narcotic to 
help ease the pain, when what is needed is a tonic or 
a surgical operation.'' 

At our meetings all cases were discussed, and the 
fundamental principles of Friendly Visiting made 
clear. The old problem, how to re-establish the 
family in normal relations to society, was new to us. 
This process of re-establishing seemed to be something 
like the process of papering a room — the first step, 
scraping and disinfecting the walls, getting rid of 
old associations and bad habits ; next, putting on the 
better life, matching the pattern of human groups 
and relations, as one matches the widths of paper. 
And if the paper be rotten, or the people lack stick- 
ing qualities, the job will not hold. 

This matching of the pattern is the particular 
part. A friendly visitor can do it when no one else 
can. She can reconcile teachers to children, and 
children to teachers ; can win the sympathy or soothe 



50 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the animosity of neighbours ; can secure the interest 
of employer in bread-winner, and inspire the bread- 
winner with ambition to give good and faithful serv- 
ice. 

Wherever their lives touch others, this matching 
must be done. And as, on the wall, the slipping of 
a width of paper makes the whole line of figures " hit- 
and-miss," from floor to ceiling, so the slipping of 
the human standards throws all the relationships out 
of harmony. 

Our visitors gave encouraging reports of how such 
readjustment had in many instances been effected. 
But there was one particular in which they generally 
failed ; that was in the case of the landlord and ten- 
ant. This was a case that needed a surgeon, and 
they were more properly nurses. The relationship 
between landlord and tenant went limping because 
the joint was out of socket. Nothing but resetting 
and a plaster cast — which means a law — could 
help things. Even then, there has been for years 
past such a lot of inflammation about the joint that 
it delays the cure ! So many tenants hate the name 
of landlord, and do so many ugly things, in resent- 
ment of what they feel are their wrongs. One bad 
landlord makes trouble for many good ones, and the 
good ones feel aggrieved, and so the trouble goes on. 

But we did not know then about housing laws, or 



] 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 51 

" teaching the tenant," or Octavia Hill rent collec- 
tors. All we could do was, when we could, to get the 
tenants to move out of the houses that made them 
sick. 

My experience upset my notions about classes, and 
made clear to me the necessity of dealing with in- 
dividuals. 

I learned that one cannot uplift blocks of people 
at a time, with any kind of a derrick. Rather, we 
have to approach them as individuals, as Christ did, 
suiting our help to each one's need ; leaning over the 
pit, reaching down and pulling out one at a time. "^ 

^^You must put your arm around them, and let 
them lea-n on you, walking shoulder to shoulder, un- 
til they can walk alone,^' Miss Rein would say, her 
face glowing. 

Ah, yes, one can give many valuable and beautiful ^ 
things without giving money. One can give love, \ 
sympathy, hope, courage, enthusiasm, inspiration. ! 
" You can never know what your friendship has meant 
to me, because you have so many friends, and I have 
nobody else," a poor old woman said to our presi- 
dent. We could well believe her, for our president 
was a great-souled, saintly woman whose friendship 
was a treasure to us all. 

Sometimes our work seemed all a failure, when we 
were trying to help build up a character out of bits 



62 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

of wreckage. But not all friendly visiting is to re- 
build wrecks. Much of it is to help those to regain 
their feet who have only slipped ; much more is to give 
comfort and cheer to those who are too old and help- 
less to fight any longer. And then, there are the 
children, the new material, with which we can build 
from the beginning. There is always hope of the 
children. 

Little by little we learned the many things that 
might be done to help a family. First, there was 
work to be found for the bread-winner. If there were 
defective members of the family who could not be 
properly cared for at home and were a drag upon 
the others, they were to be removed to the proper 
institution. Then there was the health of the fam- 
ily to be established. 

We did not know then all the wonderful things 
that our Dean Emerson (of Indiana University) is 
teaching in his social service clinic. No one of us 
realised, then, for instance, how many souls are 
choked by adenoids, or how a spiritual downfall may 
result from " fallen arches,'* or injuries to the feet. 
But out of our mother-nurse experience we did our 
best. We untangled domestic knots, helped the poor 
mothers plan and contrive, taught sanitation when 
possible, and gave instruction about baby food and 
nursing in general. The depths of ignorance in this 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 5S 

regard were beyond belief. One girl told me seriously 
that her baby sister who died had been bewitched. 
^' And she was that smart, she could eat sauerkraut 
and drink beer, and she was cutting eight teeth to 
oncet.'' But they knew she was bewitched, she in- 
sisted, because after she died they opened her little 
pillow, and found the feathers all twisted into crosses 
and rings and such! 

Our problems, being chiefly those of American born 
people, were simpler than if we had been dealing with 
foreigners or newly arrived immigrants, such as 
throng the northern part of Indiana. Evansville has 
comparatively few kinds of foreigners. We have a 
large German population, but the larger part of it 
is American born. It is the same with our large 
Jewish population. Both of these peoples furnish 
our thriftiest citizens, and though there were always 
some poor Germans, the Jewish people took good 
care of their poor. We have a good sized negro 
population, also, but it is greatly to their credit that 
they look well after their own people, in sickness or 
want. We rarely had a negro applicant for charity, 
so it happened that we did not realise until later how 
uniformly miserable and unsanitary were their dwell- 
ings. 

Some of the Friendly Visitors liked to take hold 
of big families, for we felt we were doing more. We 



54 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

certainly had more " points of contact," — my white 
dress showed that, when I got home from my visits. 
It showed the " personal touch/' too. But white will 
"boil," and its suggestive value is to# great to dis- 
card. 

Two problems kept coming up in our meetings, 
drunken husbands and dirt. When a woman's pride 
made her refer to her husband as " sick," even while 
he was sleeping ojff a spree in the corner of that very 
room, it was not wise to deny that he was suffering 
from liver trouble. He probably was. And we had 
to respect and conserve such pride, for it was the 
basis of the desired re-establishment. 

For similar reasons, we hesitated to speak of soap 
in some families, where a word would make a lather. 
Much less could one slip a bar of it into a bundle 
of magazines and leave it on the table. When one's 
friendship is as fragile as a " shell " tumbler, to speak 
of washing will almost break it. In some cases we 
longed for a visiting housekeeper, to utter what 
nearly choked us. But there were more cases where 
the struggle for cleanliness was pathetic — nay, it 
was heroic. Our visitors almost always reported a 
lack of water in the dwellings of the poor. City wa- 
ter we never found, even though the mains were in 
the street in front of the houses. Cisterns were their 




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CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 55 

only water supply, and often these were dry or full 
of trash. 

It was discouraging to solicit washings for a poor 
woman who had no other way to earn a living, and 
then have her lose them because she hadn't enough 
water to wash them white ; because, as she said, " We 
have to be sparin' of the water, cuz so many fam- 
blies uses outen the cistern." 

I asked one of the women where she got her water, 
for I saw no supply, " Why, I jes' steals it, honey, 
wherever I kin," she said ; " but folks don't like to 
have us take it, they has sech a hard time to git the 
cistern filled when it's gone." 

We who had the Ohio River on tap could hardly 
take in the situation. Yet we found many families 
whose floors were scoured, their children scrubbed, 
and their clothing washed white, with water carried 
from a distance. Some carried drinking water a 
block, others two blocks. 

In those cases where the struggle with dirt and 
grime had been given up as hopeless, we sometimes 
found opportunity, during illness of the mother, to 
send in temporary help, who left the house shining, 
and showed the children how things ought to be. 
Sometimes there was a motherless family with a half- 
grown girl struggling pathetically to keep house. 



56 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Then we could go right in ourselves, and teach cook- 
ing, sewing, cleaning, as well as conditions permitted. 

We had an extreme case that took the edge off 
of our desire to scrub, for a long time. It was an 
emergency case, a large family of little children, 
whose mother had lost her mind and wandered off 
down the railroad tracks that passed the door. 
When we saw the place, we were not surprised that 
she went crazy and left. We had been fully advised 
of conditions, and went equipped with a large bun- 
dle of assorted clothing and bedding, disinfectants, 
soap, scrubbing brushes and a strong colored woman 
to apply them. 

The father was off at work, and the little house- 
keeper, a girl of twelve, gave neither help nor inter- 
ference. She had long since reached the place where 
every dish was gummed and every pan was gluey. 
These utensils sat about on the floor, on chairs and 
table, and the pitiful, grimy little tribe watched with 
deep interest while we opened the bundles. 

First, they were invited out into the yard to a 
bonfire of the straw beds while the house was being 
fumigated. After it was scrubbed, more water was 
heated for the children's bath, and the negress 
scoured off layer after layer, to the skin! Their 
clothing went into the bonfire, and the bundle " re- 
habilitated " the family, outwardly. New mattresses 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 67 

were bought, and new kitchen tins, and a hot meal 
set on the " restored " table. But not for us ! We 
wanted only iced lemonade for several days. 

The neighbours, who hung over the fence on both 
sides, with breathless interest, promised to take turns 
helping the little mother, until the proper arrange- 
ments could be made for the children, and we left 
the scene with all of them waving until we were out 
of sight. 

Of course, this was an unusual case, but it served 
to give us a better understanding of the conditions 
which made it so hard for the poor to be clean and 
to make a house homelike. 

In all of the homes where we taught young house- 
keepers, we found ourselves nonplussed, in spite of 
our experience, by the absence of every convenience. 
With a cracked stove that wouldn't draw, with a lard 
bucket or tomato can to cook in, with little to cook 
and less to season with, what could even a chef ac- 
complish? With no kitchen sink, no water in the 
house, or even in the yard, and no place to throw dish- 
water and suds, except into the yard ; with no closets, 
no shelves ; with rough floors, still grey after contin- 
ued scouring; plastering in loose patches, shedding 
powder all about, and defaced woodwork whose cracks 
held vermin and dirt, and let in dust and soot; with 
musty, dark rooms, that had no window, or a small 



58 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

one, and could not be decently sunned or ventilated; 
low floors that were always damp, and cellars stand- 
ing in seep water — how could even a Domestic Sci- 
ence professor do anything with such a situation? 
It was too much for us. It was hopelessly out of 
reach of the poor tenants who had to live in those 
places. Lacking our experience, our standards, our 
stamina, our philosophy, the habitual slum dweller 
let bad enough alone, and new recruits, after a strug- 
gle, followed the line of least resistance. 

As to making these places homelike, it was a 
bitter joke. The best of them were cheerless and 
dismal; the worst of them were sties, where none of 
us would have housed a pet animal. 

Once in a while we had a case, above the average, 
whose outcome encouraged the whole circle. A girl 
of a better class was given into my care, having been 
brought in touch with Miss Rein through the truancy 
of her little brother. She was an attractive girl, 
with a sweet face framed in soft shining hair, and 
a pretty modest manner. Her father was a labour- 
ing man, who made good wages, but drank sometimes, 
and she kept house for him and her little brother of 
ten. She was fifteen when I first visited her, and 
ambitious to be a good housekeeper, though sorely 
in need of lessons. The matter of her brother's trou- 
ble at school was soon settled by a visit to his teacher. 



mfm 




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12; 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 59 

Luckily, she lived near enough for me to visit often, 
and for her to visit me. She came timidly, at first, 
to get bulbs or roses from my garden rows, or recipes 
for gingerbread, and rarely, for books. For five 
years I watched her blooming into womanhood, fear- 
ful at times of threatening influences, of which we 
talked together plainly. It was a relief when she 
married a sensible working man, who took good care 
of her and looked after the brother. 

We had some cases where alleviation seemed all 
there was left to give. One of my old friends lived 
in a shed, at the rear of a neat cottage. It would 
have been a good coal shed; it made a poor home. 
It was neither ceiled nor stripped, and the icy wind 
blew in, sifting the snow on to her pillow. She, poor 
little old lady, was weak from illness, largely due 
to exposure. Yet she kept the tiny room neat and 
spotless, and her stove shining. 

It was a long tale she told, gasping for breath 
with asthma. She had been wealthy once, but death, 
misfortune, loss, even robbery, had left her nothing 
but her stove, her clock, her rocking chair and her 
featherbed. The burden of her story was the horror 
of poverty to one who had been well born — " dose 
awful people — to haf to lif mit dem.'' That was 
why she had chosen that shed, in preference to a 
tenement. It became harder, each visit, to tear 



60 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

away from her, for she nearly died of loneliness. Her 
husband and children were lying out in the cemetery, 
she said, and she had not visited their graves for 
years. She talked of it so often that one day I 
drove her out there. She was ready for me, when 
I came, in her well-saved old fashioned black bonnet, 
and a black shawl pinned about her poor little bent 
shoulders. 

As we drove out over the beautiful country road, 
to the quiet hill top, she was all a-quiver with eager- 
ness. She went at once to her graves, and threw 
herself full length on the sod, in a transport of grief 
that alarmed me, and began babbling to her loved 
ones. Finally raising herself to her feet, she 
stretched her arms to heaven, with tears raining over 
her wrinkled face, pouring out a torrent of unintel- 
ligible words. Then she grew quiet, and turned and 
caught my hands, covering them with kisses. 

" Oh, what a happiness to be here, the first time 
in zehn jahr. Oh, dear friend, I thank you '' — there 
was no checking her. We sat awhile on the sward, 
then I led her away, and drove back to town, leaving 
her, with a pang, at the door of the little shed. " She 
can't live there this winter, or she'll die with asthma," 
said Miss Rein. " She's too feeble to care for her- 
self, and we must put her in some home." So we 
planned, and she went to our Christian Home. It 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 61 

was a fresh grief to part from her big cooking stove, 
which she could not carry with her. But she kept 
her rocking chair, her featherbed and her clock, whose 
ticking was a voice of other days. " Come and see 
me," she begged, at the home, and clung to me with 
caresses. 

Alms! To such as she! Nothing but sympathy 
and love could satisfy the hunger of her lonely old 
heart and that's what the Friendly Visitors are for. 

" How many of the poor have seen better days," 
we said, as our circle told their monthly experiences. 

So many interesting things happened, on our 
visits, that we were fain to tell to our friends, of our 
own world, when a polite inquiry gave an opportunity. 
It was curious to see the different ways in which peo- 
ple listened. Some gave audience with tears, and 
offers of assistance. Some were aghast. " Why, 
Mrs. Bacon," said one, " I never dreamed that any 
one lived like that in our town. But then," she 
added, " I was never thrown among that kind of 
people." 

Some listened with a blank expression, as if we 
were talking Chinese. We very soon knew when to 
stop, by a sudden feeling as of having put the right 
shoe on the left foot. But we needed helpers, and 
longed to convince our friends of the great joy in 
this service. Over and above the results to the " pa- 



62 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

ticnt/' the effect upon our own life was worth the 
effort. A broadened outlook, deepened sympathy, 
the wholesome effect even upon physical health that 
comes from forgetting one's own ailments, was of 
great value. But of even greater value was the 
effect upon the spiritual health that came from this 
good exercise. It was a radiant, deep-breathed feel- 
ing, a-tingle and a-glow — but how can one describe 
it? It's a mighty good feeling, anyhow, and was 
just what I was looking for when I wanted to do 
church work. And, in that connection, I wondered 
why Friendly Visiting wouldn't solve the problem of 
the unemployed cliurch member. But, on second 
thought, I realised that not all church members, even, 
have tact, and I felt it would be a sin to exploit the 
poor to save the souls of the well-to-do. They have 
Moses and the Prophets, as well as the gospels. And 
they liave bath tubs ! Let them learn the way to the 
liearts of the rich, who are lonely and in trouble, by 
practising on each other. 

Yet why should not every one be able to visit the 
poor, as neighbours, without doing more harm than 
good? It requires only earnestness, good sense, and 
politeness. If one behaves among them exactly as 
in the best drawing rooms, wears the same pleased 
look, exerts the same effort to be agreeable, and 
shows the same lack of curiosity, with the same de- 




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y 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 63 

gree of polite interest — that's all there is to it. 
One will meet with exactly the same response. 

One reason, I believe, why some really earnest peo- 
ple fail in their approach to the poor, is because they 
try so obviously to put themselves " on their plane." 
The poor resent that, as we would, and resent our 
giving them " modified milk " conversation, or sea- 
soning our speech to their taste as with onions. If 
we can't see the unfitness of these things, they can, 
as plainly as if we tried to wear their old clothes. 
Our best success came when we put those we visited 
on our plane, taking it for granted that they lived, 
loved and aspired just as we did. And they re- 
sponded, as we do, to those who waken our better 
selves. How we love them, who do that always! 
Indeed, it makes our dream of Heaven, that only our 
better selves shall live there. 

There were some of our cases that were candidly 
past the ability of any of our circle to handle. These 
were the cases where there were unmanageable men 
or boys in the family, who set our work at naught, 
and kept the family in extremities. It became plain 
to me that only men visitors could do anything with 
those cases, and my last family settled my conviction. 

Briefly, it was a sick mother and a worthless loafer 
of a son, who spent her pittance on cigarettes and 
beer. When she refused money, he grew ugly and 



64 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

abusive. I found her in tears, after he had emptied 
the molasses jug on her carpet, in spite, because she 
had no money to give him. She was sure, then, that 
he was incorrigible, and at her request we had a 
policeman come to arrest him. But the sight of an 
officer aroused her terror and her maternal love, and 
she turned on us both, protesting the boy's good 
qualities. On the boy's promise of good behaviour, 
the soft-hearted policeman took his departure, smil- 
ing at my disgust. " Oh, these wimmen are all that 
way, I'm used to it," he said. '' Any dawg of a feller 
can beat 'em up, and they won't appear against him 
in court." 

I knew the gentleman who could manage the boy, 
and got his promise to take the case. 

Then it occurred to me. Why not have a men's 
circle of Friendly Visitors? 

Thinking over the men most prominent in church 
and civic work, I made out a list of sixteen, including 
my husband. A few weeks later the sixteen met in 
our library to organise, and to be initiated by Miss 
Rein into the duties of the order. 

Among them were our own Methodist minister, the 
Episcopal rector, and the Jewish rabbi, several doc- 
tors and lawyers, some bankers, manufacturers, mer- 
chants, and other business men — a representative 
company, ancj some of the most substantial men in 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 65 

the city. " Let's have the circle meet at our home 
so that the children will grow up with the idea of 
using the home for social service," we said, and it 
was so ordered. 

It was interesting to find how many of these men 
had already been making visits to the poor, quietly 
slipping away at odd moments to do a good deed, 
without any one finding it out. They confessed 
somewhat shame-facedly when we questioned them. 
And they all took alms ! " Send your alms through 
us," urged Miss Rein, " and go simply as a friend 
and neighbour." And she explained the principles 
of the work. A large assortment of cases were read 
out, and each man took his choice. 

The next meeting was alive with interest. Each 
told in turn his experience with the family assigned 
him, and it made an exciting tale. There was all 
the difference in the world between the way the men 
visitors took hold of their respective cases and the 
way the women did. The men's beginning was char- 
acteristic. In a straight-forward, business like way, 
they went to work to get results, and the results were 
amazing. Every one had taken alms — every single 
man of them ! One man had already moved his fam- 
ily to another house, and had them at least out- 
wardly " reinstated." The lazy boys had been put 
to work, and the lazy girls, too, In no shilly-shally 



66 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

way. They were not squeamish, as we were, about 
calling things by their right names. 

" You ought to have seen that floor,'' said one 
gentleman, who had ^one to oifer work to the father 
of his family. " There was a big lazy girl sitting 
there, and I said, ' I should think you'd be ashamed 
to sit here while there's so much dirt around. Why 
don't you clean up, and make things look decent ? ' 
She picked up a broom, and dragged it across the 
floor, but I said, ' Here, let me show you how to 
sweep.' You should have seen the dirt fly." 

Another of our men had undertaken a drinking, 
quarrelling pair, who were a terror to the neighbour- 
hood and to the Charities as well, but who had chil- 
dren needing care. When our visitor made his first 
call the woman opened the door a crack, showing 
a wrathful eye, and a kettle of boiling water in her 
hand. She was waiting for her husband, whom she 
had chased to the coalshed. So the visit was made in 
the shed, and the man's friendship secured on the 
spot, in a way that won the applause of our circle. 

The gentleman who had moved his family reported 
that he was obliged to do so, as the man had to pass 
twenty-seven saloons on his way from work, and he 
never got home with his money. He located him on 
the edge of town, near the factory where he worked, 
and all was going well. 



CLUTCH OF THE THORNS 67 

One of our business men, a veteran of the Civil 
War, chose a wreck of an old soldier to look after, a 
lonely old chap, without friends or family. How he 
managed about his pension, gave him new courage, 
and stayed his ruin, made a touching tale. 

Our saw-mill owner and his wife, who both belonged 
to the circle, visited their needy employes, with 
splendid results to both capital and labour. One 
of our lawyers saved a couple from divorce, and 
spiked together the " house divided against it- 
self." 

Our other lawyer took a hand In an Instalment 
company fight, and saved a young couple from losing 
all they had already paid out, and their furniture 
too. 

Our minister sat up most of one night to save the 
father of his adopted family from breaking his re- 
solve and bolting to the nearest saloon when a thirst 
seized him. 

And so the stories went, showing that we had need 
for men of every profession and business to untangle 
the knots with skill, and to lend a strong hand to the 
weak and discouraged. 

At the end of our meetings, as we sat around the 
library fire, the talk drifted from the special cases to 
the problems of the day. It was Inspiring to see 
the big strong way in which these men handled them. 



68 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

with a simple directness that told the secret of their 
success in business. 

It was great to hear them, fine, high-souled, big- 
hearted men ; to see the chivalry that made them flare 
out in anger against wrongs to the women and chil- 
dren, or softened them to tender pity of the weak 
and unfortunate. 

Years afterward, they stood by me in the council, 
in the city hall, in meetings of business organisations, 
and in the legislature. And every one could be de- 
pended upon. 

What evenings those were! It was great to be 
one of such a circle. No other evenings, merely so- 
cial, left such a sense of satisfaction. 

After all had gone, we turned to the glowing em- 
bers, with a deeper glow in our hearts, and no need 
for words. 

It was worth while! 




0) 



<D 









N3 



c3 



c3 

s 

o 



CHAPTER IV 

" BEAUTY FOR ASHES " 

Through the worst streets of our city there passed 
to-day the most welcome visitor who can enter any 
of its homes, in time of trouble. A woman near forty, 
with a happy light in her clear grey eyes, a cheery 
smile, and fresh colour in her cheeks — it is our Vis- 
iting Nurse, Miss Lydia Metz. 

I know she went to-day, for she has gone every 
day for fifteen years, with brief holidays. Even on 
Sundays, when she is not expected to work, she often 
goes from choice. Typhoid cases need her, babies 
choose Sundays as a day of advent, so that some- 
times it is her busiest day. 

It was about fifteen years ago that some of us 
" girls " who had started the first training school 
for nurses in our city, took upon ourselves the sup- 
port of a visiting nurse, and the supervision of her 
work. It was only by the grace of their love for me 
and by virtue of membership dues that I belonged to 
the circle, for that was in my shadow days of illness, 
when their enthusiasm was beyond my comprehen- 
sion. But with returning health and growing in- 
terest in life came interest in others, and it was good 

69 



70 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

to be one of that circle, all so eager and able to give 
intelligent help. 

Once a month we still meet at one of our homes, 
as we have met for all of these years, to hear the 
nurse^s report and to discuss the best care of the 
patients. What one has not experienced in sick- 
ness or the care of children, another has, and the 
wisdom of our family doctors is quoted and com- 
pared. But health is not our only consideration. 

Heartsease and soul balm must go to all our pa- 
tients, and better living must be made possible. Anx- 
iously every problem is gone over, and suggestions 
reaped from years of housekeeping, nursing and 
mothering. It is a beautiful thing to see those dear 
fine women heap the fruits of their home life upon 
the table of humanity. When I see their devotion, 
I can but think of the many other cultured women, 
of equal richness of experience, whose children, older 
grown, are no longer a constant care, and whose help 
and advice would be such a boon to less fortunate 
mothers, if they would only give it. For there are 
many sick babies that one circle cannot reach, even 
in our own city. And the women I think of would 
pity and help the poor mothers, if they came begging 
to their door. But they let them die because they 
do not come. 

The visits I made with the nurse, when it came my 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'* 71 

turn to make the rounds with her, opened my eyes to 
many things that even friendly visiting had failed 
to teach me. With all I had seen, I was surprised 
at the amount of sickness we found among the poor. 
It was a revelation, also, to see pain, discomfort and 
disorder fly before the skilled hands of our nurse. 
To see, too, what disagreeable and hard things she 
had to deal with, and the disadvantages under which 
she laboured, gave convincing proof, if we needed it, 
that the greatest value of her work lay in the fact 
that it was done with a missionary spirit. 

In our homes, when we employ a trained nurse, 
every convenience is at hand. Not only is there 
plenty of clean linen, unlimited ice, etc., but the win- 
dows are screened from flies, the patient can be iso- 
lated in a quiet room, and every comfort given, every 
whim gratified. 

Miss Metz triumphed over the greatest difficulties. 
Often, before she could bathe a patient, she had to 
build a fire in the broken stove, and hunt and scour 
a pan in which to heat the water. Some of the pa- 
tients had not had a bath for years, but she never 
flinched. Often she had to supply clean sheets and 
clothing from our loan closet. Then it was worth 
the trip to see her set the loafing husband to work 
at the wash tub. In an incredibly short time she 
would have the room in order, the patient refreshed 



72 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

and relieved, enjoying the food she had prepared. 
Then on she went to the next case. 

We had all sorts of patients, and almost every 
kind of illness and hurt to care for. In the earlier 
days, before we had our tuberculosis camp and clinic, 
tuberculosis led the list of our cases, for fully half 
of our patients had it in some form, not only the 
pulmonary affection, but tuberculosis of the skin, 
glands and bones. No one could visit these cases 
without having an insight into our high death rate 
from that disease. We visited a family in one old 
house where the father was dying with " consump- 
tion." The baby was crawling about on the floor, 
near the bed, and another child, a little older, climbed 
up and sat by the father's pillow. Flies swarmed 
over the patient and over the floor, and in spite of 
the nurse's stern admonitions he was untidy and care- 
less. It gave one a creepy feeling to be in the room 
a minute, and we knew that the wife and babies were 
doomed to his fate, to say nothing of those whom the 
flies visited and dined with. But ah, the ghastly 
faces and hollow eyes, and ah, the sound of that 
dreadful cough, in room after room we visited, where 
the White Death throttles its myriad victims ! They 
were bread-winners, most of them; mothers, so many 
of them, whose little broods would be left to the care 
of charity. 




03 

Q 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES" 73 

Pneumonia claimed its toll in winter, and gave us 
many patients, when icy rains dripped through the 
leaky roofs, and cold winds whistled through the 
loose casings, and blew the rags out of the broken 
window panes. There was rheumatism, too; one of 
the worst enemies of the poor, for it cripples so many 
past earning power. 

One old woman, coughing and hobbling, showed us 
her cellar, half full of seep water. " All the cel- 
lars in this row are this way," she declared, " but 
the landlord says he don't see no call to drain 
'em." 

Most of the houses we visited had no cellars, and 
those there were proved wet and mouldy. Many of 
the dwellings were built flat on the ground, some- 
what after the peculiar manner of the early settlers, 
who settled down wearily and hard when they lit. 
All through this part of the country are still to be 
found cabins built in wet, undrained hollows, with 
timbers laid next to the earth. No wonder our 
grandmothers were twisted and bent at fifty. The 
floors were rotting in some of these old shells. In 
some they were only rotted, but holes were worn 
through, and a number of families put their gar- 
bage down into these holes, because complaints were 
made when they put it in the yard, and they had 
no adequate way to dispose of it, The children. 



74 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

creeping about on the damp floors, had every stage 
of " colds/' and often showed enlarged glands. 

In summer we had other troubles, typhoid cases 
and babies sick with dysentery. In these cases the 
first thing I always wanted to see was the water sup- 
ply, for, with all the talk about impure milk, I could 
not forget the rigid discipline through which our 
doctor had put me in regard to our own babies' drink- 
ing water. When two families that used one cistern 
had cases of typhoid, and both families had sick 
babies, suspicion rested on the dstern. One look 
at it was enough, generally, for we could see floating 
trash and sometimes a scum on top. There were no 
lids on any cistern I ever saw, and when they were 
cleaned out there were ghastly and sickening dis- 
closures. But it wasn't only what fell into the cis- 
tern, but what seeped into it that made the water 
unfit to drink. Dishwater and suds, thrown on the 
soil about the cistern, lay and soured, until they 
gradually sank down and seeped through the loose 
cistern walls. Loathsome old vaults, standing for 
years, were sometimes within a few feet of the cis- 
tern. 

I took a bottle of water from the cistern, at one 
place, where a. man was ill with typhoid, to show our 
board of health. It was alive with darting " bugs." 
" I hev to strain the bugs outen our cistern water 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'^ 75 

before I kin wash with it," said a woman at another 
home. " Some of 'em drinks it, but I jes' caint, an' 
I go two squares to the schoolhouse fer drinkin' 
water." 

No wonder there was so much sickness in our city ! 
We had one story-and-a-half frame house, the one 
room downstairs containing a saloon and grocery, 
with three families living upstairs in three attic 
rooms. 

There was no sewer connection and all the waste 
water drained under the building and then found its 
way into the street. It was a wonder to me then, 
and is still, how a good housekeeper could buy gro- 
ceries in that filthy place, and in scores of others, little 
better, scattered over our town and other towns. 
In this place there was decayed grocery garbage 
heaped in the yard, there was a vile old shed, with 
its cesspool, and the swarms of flies from these buzzed 
back and forth over the grocery tables, and walked 
about on the cauliflower, berries and cakes, all un- 
covered in the dust. 

There was a row of old one-story frames, where 
sixty-one people lived in twenty-eight rooms. They 
had one cistern, without a top, into which fell a child 
of three years. 

In the attic of a filthy old tumbledown frame we 
found a man living with a crippled wife. The only 



76 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

furniture they had was a table, a chair, and a mat- 
tress, with an old coat for a pillow. 

We actually found a sink in one kitchen, but its 
waste pipe was connected with the vault in the yard, 
and the children were sick all the time. 

We found houses built flat on the ground which 
sloped from the alley to the house. In some cases, 
when it rained, the mud washed in on the floor. One 
of these houses had a damp cellar and a bad cistern, 
and, needless to say, there were several cases of 
typhoid. 

It was surprising to see how some of the families 
who lived in these houses got along. In one place 
four children slept in one bunk under the bed. 

Four children were sick with typhoid at once in 
one of these tenements, and at the same time a family 
on the other side of the house had it. The children 
had to go to the hospital to get adequate care. 
Two of them died. Whenever I think of those four 
little fever-tortured bodies — what it would have 
meant to me had they been my children — I feel 
something boil within me. It was a devoted family, 
of the better class of our patients, and they were as 
heart-broken over the two they lost as any of our 
circle would have been. The nurse's tale of their 
grief haunts me yet. And those children should not 
have died! 





Miss Lydia ]\Ietz, visiting nurse 

Civic cancer spots. Full of families, side entrances. 
2.5 -foot lot entirely covered, except narrow walk 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'' 77 

All through the summer we had typhoid cases. 
Some recovered, wasted and weak after a long ill- 
ness, unable for many months to help earn the living, 
so that charity had to come to the rescue. Others 
died. I began to think that too many people were 
dying from tuberculosis and typhoid in our slums, 
and to wonder why something was not done to check 
these " preventable " diseases. So many cases of de- 
pendency were due to the death of bread-winners, or 
their prolonged illness from these diseases, that it 
really seemed as if prevention should be a matter of 
concern to the tax-payers and those who kept up our 
charities. 

We had so many, many sick babies in the summer, 
too. A teething baby hasn't much chance, in some 
of those hot, stifling rooms, where the beds are ranged 
about the cook stove, and there Is only poisoned 
water to drink. It was hard to see them, wasted and 
white, moaning in their mother's arms, or writhing 
on the hard bed. It brought to my mind my own 
anxious vigils, when I saw them burning with fever. 
It was more than I could bear to look at them, lying 
on a straw tick, tossing their little hot, grimy hands, 
in the same ragged dress, stifle with dirt, in which 
they had crawled over the rough floors. 

Some of the poor ignorant mothers were afraid it 
would kill their babies to bathe them when they had 



78 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

fever. But the nurse was firm and had her way. 
We sent ice and milk, medicine and little garments for 
the sick babies. We had a circle of young girls who 
provided all such things, a circle that now, as young 
married women, have established a babies' clinic with 
a nurse of their own, and provide pure milk for the 
sick babies and instruction for the mothers. 

Those who fancy (not knowing) that the poor 
have blunted sensibilities and less feeling for their 
children than we have, should see them at those times. 
" It's all we have," they cry, in an abandonment of 
grief. And those who say (not knowing) that " the 
poor prefer filth," should see the pathetic gratitude 
of the family when the nurse calls them in to see the 
change she has wrought upon the dead baby. All 
the tear stains washed away forever, with all the hor- 
ror of grime, pure as alabaster are the tiny features, 
silken smooth the soft curls. And, most appreciated 
of all, the little icy hands are clasped above a snow- 
white dress, with soft lace at the neck and wrists, 
such as in all its hard little life the baby never wore. 

No one knows how much that white memory means 
to the family! 

There is so little for the children of the slums to 
live for, and such certain hardship is ahead of them, 
that I always pity the ones who get well. The babies 
of the slums ! Whenever I try to talk of them some- 



'^BEAUTY FOR ASHES" 79 

thing rises up and chokes me. It's the thought of 
one of my own babies setting its little bare feet on 
those slimy yards, among the sharp cinders. I never 
see them without a shudder at the thought of all that 
tender flesh will have to suffer — bruises, aches and 
illness, hunger and cold — of the coarse, filthy cloth- 
ing and wretched food. Worst of all, some of them 
will have oaths and blows, and there will be a bestial 
life about them, so they cannot grow up innocent or 
pure. 

Sometimes in our visiting we found a good woman 
who had moved temporarily into the larger tene- 
ments with her sweet little children, perhaps fresh 
from the country. She would tell us with tears of the 
sights unfit for childish eyes, and the vulgar pro- 
fanity that kept them all terrorised. The head of 
one of our institutions for unplaceable children also 
told me of the vicious habits she found in children 
from crowded homes, where men, women and children 
occupied one room together, and no effort was made 
to preserve decency. 

We saw too much of the evils of crowded tene- 
ment life, when a number of families used one old 
house, fighting over the cistern, the wash line, and 
the sheds, using the common stairs, generally dark 
at night. In many of these houses were lodgers who 
came in tipsy at night, and there were young girls 



80 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

groping their way up those dark stairs, too. Some 
of the sequels of herded families we traced to the 
penitentiary. Some were poured into our ears in 
dim stuffy bedrooms, where young girls, won by the 
nurse's kindness, told their pitiful story. 

How many of these tales of ruin we heard! But 
the awful thing was when the whole family took it as 
a matter of course. 

When we' found feeble-minded girls among these 
cases, we threw up our hands. Where was to be the 
high-tide mark of misery and poverty, with our insti- 
tutions already full, and no chance to segregate the 
half-witted girls who were the easiest j^rey? 

It was a world of shadows that we came into, the 
shadows of those great monsters. Poverty, Vice, Dis- 
ease. They were with us and about us, and we saw 
two of them. Poverty and Disease, face to face in all 
their gaunt bareness. We saw only the slimy trail 
of Vice, in its undeniable evidences and sickening 
results. Its shadow was always over us and about 
us, but Vice itself was hidden away, denied, pushed 
back into the dark, so that it had for me all the 
horror of mystery that it had in my childhood. 

We had reason to look for vice in the tenements, 
rather than in the hovels, but the hovels had just as 
much disease. Many of our patients lived in single 
houses, that were often mere shacks. They had the 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES" 81 

advantage of the separate yard, which gave them at 
least privacy. But the unsanitary conditions were 
just as bad as those of the tenements, in many par- 
ticulars. In some districts there are rows of old cot- 
tages, each with its miserable, sour back yard, old 
vaults and garbage, and the odours and flies that 
always accompany them. In the tenements they had 
all of these, and, besides, the lack of privacy, the 
noise of many feet tramping through the bare halls, 
the fights and carousals, and the surging in and out 
of other tenants that makes sickness a nightmare. I 
was constantly impressed not only by the amount of 
preventable illness but of the great amount of misery 
that was entirely unnecessary and could have been 
so easily remedied by repairs and better sanita- 
tion. 

Our patients were found in many un-looked-for 
places: in sheds or stables, in the heart of the busi- 
ness district, over saloons or warehouses, out on the 
edge of town. Down busy streets and up filthy 
alleys we went, to visit them, and one day I found 
Lucindy ! 

She had married a handsome, drunken fellow, who 
had gone from bad to worse, till he brought her and 
her two children to real poverty. She had two rooms 
with brick floors, on the ground of one of the worst 
old rattletrap tenements in the city. There she was, 



82 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

sick In bed, thin and haggard, but sweet and gentle 
as ever. I looked about the wretched rooms, and de- 
cided that the hours I spent in training her were evi- 
dently forgotten. Yet what better could she have 
done in that hole! 

Her children were out on the pavement at play 
with the children of some vicious looking tenants. 
They came in when she called them, with modest man- 
ners, ragged and barefoot, and yet, by their sweet 
ways and the jaunty air of a faded ribbon the little 
girl wore, I knew the mother still tried to hold to the 
old traditions. But oh, Lucindy, to have come to 
this! 

Her story was tragic to me, because I knew her 
whole life. How many other tragedies we only 
glimpsed, reading one sad page when all the rest were 
sealed. 

I came to realise why Christ had laid so much stress 
upon our service to the poor, seeing how little they 
had besides hardship and sorrow. Sometimes on the 
scarred wall, above the bed, we saw the picture of a 
saint or a Madonna, and the pitying eyes always 
seemed to exchange glances with us over the anguish 
they looked upon. 

And sometimes, knowing how their need had always 
drawn Him, far down the dim street I could almost 
think I saw a radiance pass. 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'' 83 

Little by little this work had grown upon me, and 
yet all I did took only a few hours each week. It 
was all done when the children were in school, and 
would not need me. 

When the youngest was nine years old, she sud- 
denly lost that distinction of age by the advent of 
a younger brother and sister, Hilary and Joy. 

Twins ! 

Some people have to account for everything. 
" Which side of the family are they on? " friends de- 
manded. 

" Neither. They are a special dispensation, and 
came straight down from heaven," we answered, 
proud and radiant. 

" I hope you'll raise them both. Twins are awfully 
hard to raise, and if anything happens to one, the 
other is apt to go too," some one said. 

No wonder that for two anxious years every breath 
was watched and every pulse beat counted. With 
two nurses and two infants my hands were full, with- 
out hunting up more cares in the slums. 

But when we felt that the seraphim had become 
naturalised citizens of this world, and were not in 
imminent danger of floating off into the empyrean 
again, if a window or door were left unguarded, a 
reaction came from the long tension of anxiety. I 
began, too, to worry about my old families, and stole 



84 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

a little visit to them, now and then, glad to get away 
from the nurses. 

One day my second daughter, Albion, then about 
eleven, came to me, all excitement. " Three of us 
girls are going to have a club, and we don't know 
what to have,'' she said, adding shyly, " We'd like to 
do something for the poor.'^ 

I suggested a sewing club, to make garments for 
the poor, but it was not to their mind. Lemonade 
stands, as a way of raising money for charity, were 
not to my mind. " A flower mission," was my last 
thought, " and you can raise flowers, and carry them 
to the sick people." 

The suggestion was enthusiastically received, and 
as enthusiastically carried out. But when we found 
that our own neighbourhood was too healthy and too 
prosperous to furnish any " cases," that ended it. 
The children went a few times to the hospitals, but 
they were too far, and we did not like to send them 
alone, even though the nurses saw to them. As for 
the slums, that was out of the question. So it re- 
sulted in my taking the children's bouquets for them. 
They were so gratefully received, and so pathetically 
enjoyed, beyond my expectation, that it seemed a 
pity not to go again. Why not have a flower mis- 
sion for the whole city? 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES" 85 

Miss Rein was delighted with the idea. The ladies 
of our Visiting Nurse's Circle promised to help, so I 
set about to organise a flower mission, of which the 
three little originators should be a part. It was my 
idea that it should be a branch of our Associated 
Charities, and should do nothing but take flowers, 
or perhaps delicacies, to the poor who were sick, or in 
especial trouble or sorrow. 

How many nights the plans were in unfolding I 
do not remember. When they were all in full bloom 
they were presented at a flower tea, which I gave 
for the purpose. Our Nurse's Circle helped with the 
tea, and sent me a wealth of garden blooms that made 
the house a bower. A number of young girls took 
lists of names among the guests for members, and 
subscribed themselves as helpers. Committees were 
arranged, some to get flowers, some to distribute 
them, others to secure carriages. 

It was exciting, when the flower mission opened 
the next Friday, to have loads of blossoms arrive. 
They had begun to come in the evening before, and 
were overflowing baskets, jars, and even tubs. The 
neighbours sent them from far and near, by messen- 
ger boys, by shy little girls, by colored coachmen. 
Florists donated huge boxes of roses and carnations, 
flowers were sent which had served the day before as 



86 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

decorations for receptions. A friend brought the 
one perfect rose off of her pet bush — it was won- 
derful to see how they poured in. 

A generous friend had offered her verandah, and 
for awhile that was our headquarters. Later I had 
the girls all meet at my home, and start from there. 
Under the trees, on the lawn, we spread out the flow- 
ers, and tied them into individual bunches. The 
twins helped, and so did Margaret and Albion, and the 
other little girls. It was a fragrant task, and a 
most delightful one. There were great pansies, tied 
together in clusters, roses twined with honeysuckle, 
sweet pease, mignonette, and all the old-fashioned 
garden favourites. These were laid in large paste- 
board boxes, and a list of the places to be visited put 
in each box. Then the carriages drove up, and the 
girls, two by two, with laps full and hands full, and 
flowers heaped about their feet, drove off, laughing, 
like Flora's own maidens. Every one of them were 
society girls, and some one remarked the appropriate- 
ness of sending butterflies with the flowers. But 
their faithful work proved them to be bees, rather 
than butterflies. 

Miss Metz gave us a carefully prepared list, and 
the girls were not expected to go to contagious cases. 
There were many houses, besides, to which I would 
not send them, taking the last load myself. The 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'* 87 

girls had arranged to take turns, but some became 
so interested in certain cases that they came back 
every week. " Old Mrs. Todd will be disappointed 
if I don't come," one would say. 

" Oh, Mrs. Bacon, it ain't only the flowers you 
send, it's them sweet girls," said one grateful old 
woman, who could not praise the girls enough. 

It was part of my plan that a brief friendly visit 
was to be made when the flowers were delivered. We 
found that they solved the first problem of the 
Friendly Visitor, — how to efi^ect an entrance — for 
hearts and doors flew open at sight of the blossoms. 
Big boys stopped fighting, and came quietly and po- 
litely to ask for a rose or a pansy. Little children 
crept up and gazed wistfully at them. The sick 
reached eager hands for them. The old " shut ins " 
wept for joy to clasp them in their palsied fingers. 
And when we laid^ a bunch upon the bare pine coffin, 
which would have had no grace of bloom or beauty if 
we had passed it by, it seemed to be lamp and in- 
cense both, in that place of gloom. 

And so we entered into the Kingdom of All Souls, 
and found that the ambassador to the Court of Sor- 
row needs no other passport than a handful of 
flowers. 

One thing that touched me inexpressibly was the 
fact that to be " Flower Lady," as we were called, 



88 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

gave the poor confidence in our sympathy. " Trou- 
ble Woman '' might have been our title, for not only 
did the family we visited follow us to the curb with 
the last details of their woes, but neighbours of theirs 
put heads out of windows, and began their own re- 
citals. We listened and soothed as long as we could 
stay, emptied the boxes of the last flower, and came 
away with aching hearts and a new realisation of 
the " inadequacy of relief." Inadequate, indeed, are 
material helps for the needs of the heart! 

It was hard to get a few people, who had spacious 
lawns and plenty of flowers, who, when they were ill, 
were overloaded with hot house plants, to see why 
we should need a Flower Mission in Evansville, 
They looked incredulous when we told them of fami- 
lies shut up in one room of miserable tenements, 
with only the pavement in front, and either a bricked 
space at the rear, or a slimy strip upon which the 
grass refused to grow. " But it would be better to 
take them food," they insisted. And when we told 
them that rarely did any one starve for want of food 
in our city, but many starved for friendship and 
beauty, we could see that we were talking Chinese 
again. These people never visited the poor, and had 
no conception of how they lived. 

There was really a good deal of hard work con- 
nected with the Flower Mission. The president of 



*^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'' 89 

our Nurse's Circle spent many hours, in her big beau- 
tiful garden, cutting blooms for it. Our friend who 
sent a great tray of pansies each week, and other 
loving friends who gave their blossoms so gladly, 
found that the gathering of them was quite laborious. 
Then, the girls who carried them gave a half day, 
each time. And, as leader, it took sometimes a day 
and a half out of my week. 

"After all, does it pay?" I asked Miss Rein, re- 
peating the criticisms, 

" Does it psij? " she repeated, with a radiant face, 
" Why, doesn't it always pay to make any one happy, 
if only for a moment? And, even after the flowers 
are withered and gone, there is the memory of them, 
and of the love and sympathy they expressed. Of 
course, it paysJ"* 

It was confirmation of her words to find that some 
of our poor old paralytics, whom we visited every 
week, kept their flowers from one visit to another, 
even after they were quite dry and yellow. They 
came to expect our visits, and would be moved to 
the door to be ready to greet us. In spring we took 
them boughs of apple blossoms, and sprays of plum, 
with great bunches of violets — all the wealth of the 
country lanes and orchards. We knew, by the look 
in those dim old eyes, that the brick walls and un- 
sightly sheds before them had vanished, and they 



90 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were wandering In memory down the old shady paths 
that their childish feet had pressed. Broken words 
told us so, and we were fain to have them tarry there. 

We were always glad we had gone. Sometimes it 
meant so much more than we had dreamed it would* 

Into a dark stuffy little back room of an old brick 
tenement row we carried a bunch of lilies to a woman 
dying of cancer. She looked up gratefully. " I 
can't eat, you know, and the flowers are so refresh- 
ing." 

We didn't realise, until we found a mother 
and father, strangers, alone in the city, weeping in 
an attic room over their dead baby, how much a few 
flowers could mean. One after another every one of 
their children had died, they said, and this was the 
last, a beautiful, golden haired child. Just to know 
that they had a friend, that some one cared, and that 
their baby wouldn't have to be buried without a 
flower, was a comfort. They had been fearful that it 
might have been diff^erent — and then we came. 

We could not go to our largest tenements without 
having an unlimited supply of posies. At Old St. 
Mary's the children of the forty-eight families came 
trooping out to meet ug, and as soon as each little 
hand was filled they would slip away to " their room " 
and put the flowers into a tumbler of water. Then 
they would fall intp line again, for another turn. 







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**BEAUTY FOR ASHES'' 91 

At one big tenement, when we had given all we 
had, the children clamoured for more, coming after 
us like a pack of ravenous wolves, till the twins, 
watching wide-eyed, climbed onto the carriage seats 
in fear. I hadn't expected the tenement children to 
follow us out, and, though I generally took the twins, 
they always sat at a safe distance, outside, unless, 
at some clean and safe place, where there was no 
contagion, I took them to the door, to speak to our 
friends. When they were old enough to carry little 
baskets, I took them into the hospital wards, and I 
shall never forget the way the old men's eyes lighted 
up, to see the bright little faces. Margaret and Al- 
bion took turns going with me ; sometimes they went 
alone, between times, to special and safe places. Our 
flower girls went to the cases of the district nurse, and 
to others that we found, to those in distress, to the 
shut-ins, and to the charity wards of the hospitals. 
Often we found a stranger, lonely and away from 
home, in a hospital room, and left a spray, with a 
word of cheer, in the name of friendship, where char- 
ity would have been out of place. 

Nothing impressed me more than the response the 
flowers elicited. The response to alms was, in eff^ect, 
more demands. The response to our confidence in 
the poor was their confidence in us. Our friendship 
won their friendship. But the simple act of taking 



92 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

flowers, being an acknowledgment of their higher na- 
ture, woke into bloom their finer and sweeter quali- 
ties. Often I marvelled at the delicate expressions 
of appreciation, from those naturally rough and un- 
couth of speech. As in a mirror we saw reflected the 
image we set before them, and I felt sorely how little 
was set before the masses of our people, in compari- 
son to what we might give them. Another thing im- 
pressed me, that, at sight of the flowers, for the first 
time I saw a gleam of inspiration in those dull eyes. 
There was nothing, in any form of charity work, 
that gave me the satisfaction the Flower Mission did. 
From the first, the ugliness of the slums had hurt me 
in the same way as did the misery of the poor. In 
fact, the two seemed related from the time I began 
to visit them. It was not merely a sentimental no- 
tion, for the problem " H^ or P^ " persisted in my 
mind, and everything I experienced confirmed all I 
had read on such subjects. The power of beauty to 
soothe, to cheer, to keep sane, to heal, to uplift, was 
made clearer to me with each visit. When I saw 
how their eyes kindled at sight of the flowers, I felt 
sure that Maeterlinck was right when he said 
" Beauty is the unique aliment of our soul." And 
if that be true some of our poor have to go farther 
for that food than they do for water, for there are 
whole districts that are drearily ugly throughout. 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES'' 93 

I used to wonder how the children brought up in 
the scenes we visited, that sickened and oppressed me 
to see even once, where there was no outlook that was 
not degrading and blunting to the soul, could ever 
keep that conscience of the eye that discerns false- 
hood of form and colour. 

It startled me to find that, when I came back to 
my own home, after a round of the slums, it looked 
so much larger and handsomer than when I left it in 
the morning. If half a day had that effect on my 
standards what would a few years do to growing 
minds, that had no other standards than those of the 
slums ? 

" But they don't mind it as you would, they're 
used to it," some of my friends said. 

What a comment on the deadening effect of such 
an environment! But the ones who said that con- 
fessed they had never visited the poor, and they 
didn't realise how many in the slums had not always 
been used to it, and had been bom to better things. 

But the children who were born there? Were they 
to grow up " used to it " ? 

Some of the wealthy owners of our worst tene- 
ments, who had children of their own, admitted the 
value of beauty in their choice of sites for their own 
homes, choosing a noble outlook, beautiful archi- 
tecture, harmonious colours and fine lines in their 



94 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

furnishings, and excluding the ugly as carefully as 
the low. If beauty means so much to our children, 
as we agree it does, why doesn't it mean the same to 
the poor? 

It is a wonder how one could expect any of the 
children of our slums to have any true ideals. How 
could we expect that out of those thousands of miser- 
able " homes '' should come one architect or artist, 
author, statesman, or even one decent citizen? How 
could we expect one of them, when they grow up, to 
vote for civic improvement, or to stand for churches 
or schools ? How could we expect any of them to be 
patriots? Crowded into filthy sties, with no room 
for a family circle unless they sit on the beds about 
the cook stove, with no sanctity of home life, would 
" your altars and your fires " mean anything to 
them? Would "America''? They know only the 
street cobble " rocks,'' only the gutter " rills," and 
the " woods and templed hills '' could have no place 
in imaginations which were atrophied in babyhood. 

I used to long to give the children an Aladdin's 
lamp that would open to them a doorway into a 
higher world, or at least give them a shining ladder 
by which they might climb out of their gloomy prison. 
But what fairy could ever be expected to visit those 
sodden yards, where nothing could grow? Nothing 
but sooty little imps, or grotesque creatures such as 



^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES" 95 

peopled the underworld court of Peer Gynt's Dovre 
King, would feel at home there. Even the " angel 
that 'tends to things " has to pin back his wings 
and tuck up his gown, to get through tidily. 

But still it gnawed at my heart, that aching to 
somehow give them some food for their souls. The 
flowers we took were like crumbs to the starving. 
We took a suggestion from the mute appeal of the 
portulaca, that ragged flower of the poor, that 
bravely struggled to bloom for them, in rusty tin cans, 
on window ledges, thick with dust, above the crowded 
streets. Home gardening would be just the thing, 
we thought, and started out to redeem some of the 
waste places. 

Our generous flower patrons sent express loads of 
bulbs and seedlings, and we had them set out in 
scores of surprised back yards that needed them 
most. A few grand successes made up for all the 
failures that came from the lack of supervisors we 
could not supply. 

One little girl spent a rapturous summer in her 
bower, and others told of many happy hours of en- 
joyment in their gardens. 

We tried some boxes in the windows of the 
crowded tenements above the traffic in the heart of 
town, where there were no yards, and the children 
were shut up in second and third story rooms. 



96 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

But it seemed such a pittance, an apology for all 
the bounty of bloom that May, even then, was show- 
ering upon the fields. Even then, I knew, children 
were gathering armfuls of daisies in. the meadows. 
Little ones were lying in the deep grass, under the 
apple boughs, laughing to catch the scented petals 
that drifted about them. 

The big wistful eyes that looked out of the little 
grey faces so hungrily at my flowers made me feel 
ashamed for the race, and, putting my biggest bunches 
into the little hands, I went out, heart sick, again. 
Groping my way down the dark stairway to the 
ground, I passed on through the dusty heart of the 
town. Ahead of me, all the way, went a vision of a 
child whose light feet danced along the hill tops. 
The great free spaces of the country came back to 
me, the sun-kissed hills, the wind-swept valleys. 
Even the smell of the rain on the meadows came over 
me, that " breezy call of incense breathing morn '' 
that held me spellbound in childhood. 

And these children were shut away from it all! 

Down deep in my heart came a knowledge that I 
could never rest until I could do something — some- 
thing to wipe out the blot of the slums, to lift the 
shadow, the horror of their ugliness — to give 
" beauty for ashes.'' 



CHAPTER V 

THE WORKING GIRLS 

" It was nearly midnight when I came home one 
night, recently," said Mr, Harrington, the Y. M. 
C. A. secretary, " The side streets were growing 
quiet, and I met very few people. As I came past 

the back of the saloon on S street, the one that 

has been so much talked about on account of the 
wine room over it, I noticed a cab standing at the 
side entrance. Just then the door opened and I saw 
a man coming down the stairway, with a girl over 
his shoulder, like a sack of flour. She was evidently 
dead drunk, or drugged. He put her into the cab 
and it drove away." 

There were five of us gathered in my library to 
discuss a proposed step in a social emergency, but 
nothing that was said before or after that story re- 
mains with me, for the impression it made was so 
profound. 

It was just as if the monster, Vice, the outlines of 

whose veiled form I had but dimly seen, and whose 

shadow always darkened the slums, had suddenly 

come close and turned his hideous visage full upon 

me. It had sickened me when first I saw the faces 

97 



98 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

of those other two, Poverty and Disease, but this one 
made me tremble. I had learned to accept the fact 
that all of them made their haunts in the slums, and 
to think of them as breeding there. One comes to 
think of the darkness of those miserable places as 
the cloak of Vice, and the stench of them as the foul 
breath of Disease. I had even grown to realise, after 
a number of epidemics, how Disease creeps out of the 
slums, steals into our own homes, and smites us at 
our very firesides. 

But Vice! I didn't realise that it did the same 
thing. There wasn't any ocular demonstration of 
that. There was no crepe on the door where girls 
were ruined or boys went to the bad. There were 
no funeral processions, with white cofiins, to cross 
our path, and make us think about the victims. We 
couldn't trace that kind of contagion by house flies, 
or such emissaries of death from the filthy dens. 
And there wasn't anything in the nature of a death 
list in the papers, just a headline, now and then, 
to tell of what went on in the dark. 

And here was Vice, in our midst! Nobody knew 
whose girl that was, who was put into that cab. 
Nobody knew what boys were in her company. I 
thought of the story my pretty nurse had told me, 
of the " mashers " lined up on the bright streets at 
night, and of some girl friends who had gone to 



THE WORKING GIRLS 99 

a picture show, and later to a restaurant, with two 
strange boys. She had come in, one night, white 
and excited, and told me of the son of a well known 
family following her home. 

But I hadn't thought of such endings ! 

I was like some one who had slept while a house 
was burning, and woke to hear cries for help. To 
think of ever having said ** I don't want to know 
these things ! " 

Now I wanted to know. Not everything — oh, 
horrors, no! but enough to be able to help, to do 
something more than to spray rose water, or rub on 
salve. I wanted to do something for the girls in the 
world around me, outside of the slums, to keep them 
from being drawn into those dreadful traps. 

There was a big story in the newspapers, just then, 
about a girl who was kidnapped, at one of our depots, 
and escaped later, to tell a dreadful white slave ex- 
perience. 

One of our friends, Mr. S. N. Douglas, was then, 
and is still. President of the Board of Children's 
Guardians here. Knowing the devoted service that 
he and his wife had given to humanity for years, I 
went down to find out something about the real con- 
ditions that threatened our young people. 

He told me many sad cases of ruined homes, way- 
ward girls, and, neglected children, things that his 



100 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

office had given him power to probe into, with the 
help of the law, which I would never have discovered 
in my visits. Then he sent me to their probation 
officer. The latter told me of the young girls he 
had driven in off the streets, at night, only to have 
their mothers tell him to " 'tend to his own business." 
He told me of some of the lures that draw girls, and 
ended with a statement as to the number of girls — 
young girls, who stayed out on the streets, and never 
went home all night. " But they are the children of 
immoral parents, who grow up accustomed to these 
things ; what we call the lower classes ? '^ I faltered. 

" Not all of them," he answered. " There are 
many, a surprising number, from the better classes." 

That night, and many nights, I lay awake, listen- 
ing to the steps that passed the house. Some were 
light and swift, some dragging and slow. Surely, 
none of them went astray, up in our good neigh- 
bourhood ! 

But I was haunted with the thought of the little 
white feet, some of them glimmering yet, almost, with 
the light of the pearly street where they had been 
so lately set, passing on to sink into the ooze and 
mire, perhaps never to come back! 

One Sunday morning the police matron telephoned 
me, the Charities office being closed, to know if I 
would come down to a little cheap hotel near one of 






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THE WORKING GIRLS 101 

our railroad stations, to see a country girl, sick and 
in trouble. Telephoning Miss Metz to meet me there, 
I went on down. 

The girl was a gentle, ignorant creature, from the 
backwoods of Kentucky, who had come to find work 
in our city. She had simply taken her small funds 
and started off, with no friends here, no references, 
and no place in sight. She had blown out the gas 
on her first night here, and barely escaped asphyxi- 
ation. But her escape from a worse fate was more 
marvellous. As I entered her little stuffy room she 
was sitting, dressed, on the side of her bed, dazed, 
sick and trembling still from the effects of the gas, 
telling her story to a big policeman. She told of 
the kind gentleman whom she had picked out of a 
trainful of men, all strange to her, and asked him to 
show her to a hotel, assuring him that she had money ! 

She wanted to go right back home, but she was too 
sick to travel, and could not be left there. So I 
brought her to my home, imtil she was able to start 
off on the train alone. She was thoroughly home- 
sick and frightened, but we did not let her go with- 
out telling her some plain facts. 

The incident aroused me to the dangers to which 
ignorant country girls are exposed, and I told it to 
our Home Missionary Society, which had just 
organised. 



102 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

There was a division of interest in the society be- 
tween work in Evansville and outside work, such as 
helping the immigrants in our big cities, frontier 
work, etc., all of which was strongly presented in our 
church literature. Having a hand in the programme 
for that year, I determined to enlist at least a part 
of the interest for our own city, whose need, I knew, 
was so desperate, and to which no other city was. 
sending funds, or to which no home missionary would 
be sent. So we took up a study of the needs and con- 
ditions of our city, from every social standpoint, 
including schools, asylums, jails and slums, and it was 
understood that whoever took part in the programme 
must actually go and investigate. 

Besides this, we had on our programme people who 
knew about actual conditions, the president of our 
Board of Children's Guardians, their probation offi- 
cer, the police matron, the Y. M. C. A. secretary, 
the Charities secretary, and others. 

Never was more live interest in missionary meet- 
ings. Every one was packed to the doors, and vis- 
itors became members. 

Thrilled and spellbound those dear good women 
sat, with " oh's " and '^ ah's " of horror. At some 
places they looked down and picked at their gloves, 
or smoothed out a black silken wrinkle. Mr. Doug- 
las told how he had called at a home to see about 



THE WORKING GIRLS 103 

taking some children, and the mother, opening the 
door, dropped her baby onto the floor, because she 
was too drunk to hold It. He and the others told 
things the like of which our women had never heard 
In all their sweet pure lives. But they were made of 
good Methodist stuff, and to know their duty was to 
do It. Not a word of persuasion was needed to make 
them take up a work for girls. In our city. 

The first thing we did was to open a room for 
temporary shelter for girls and women who might be 
stranded and friendless. The next was to have big 
cards printed and framed and hung In the cars. In all 
the railroad or traction lines coming Into EvansvIUe, 
and to have them posted. In the stations far along the 
roads, particularly at the little country stations. 
These were the " Traveller's Aid " warning and di- 
rection notices, giving the address of our shelter 
room. They brought some Interesting and helpful 
results. 

Another work soon came to our hands. One day, 
at noon, I went by the Charities office to make a visit 
to a case with Miss Eleanor Foster, the new assistant 
secretary. 

As she locked the door of the office she remarked, 
^' I wish there were some pleasant place, In our city, 
where the working girls could spend their noon hour, 
where they might eat their lunch and rest and read — 



104 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

some comfortable, cosy place." Then she explained 
that she had found some of the factory girls taking 
their lunches in saloon dining rooms, or eating a cold 
lunch at their work tables in the factories, in the 
midst of the muss of their work. 

They did seem very bad, the incidents she told, 
though I had never given a thought to the subject. 

" Well, let's have a place. Why not ? " I asked. 
And as we walked along in the crisp air we discussed 
a plan. She told me what she knew of the girls' 
troubles and temptations, and we talked of how we 
could help them, if we could come in touch with them. 
The matter was presented to the next Home Mis- 
sionary meeting, Miss Foster being also a member. 
Our ladies were all interest, and appointed us two, 
with our deaconess, who was deeply concerned about 
such things, as an investigating committee to go the 
rounds of the shops and factories, and see what was 
needed, and was most feasible. So we started out. 

The big iron doors of the mills and factories opened 
to us, and shut us in to a new world. 

We had driven past these huge buildings, and had 
heard the roar of machinery, but we thought only of 
the moving bands and the buzzing wheels, then. 

Now, inside, looking down the long dusty aisles, 
where ranks of girls stood, with machine-like motions, 
we realised that human lives were woven on those 



THE WORKING GIRLS 105 

looms, or wound among those wheels. The girlsi 
seemed so much a part of their work that when one 
of them answered our greeting it was ahnost as if a 
cog had spoken. 

It gave a new importance to fabrics, buttons, 
paper, etc., to see them grow by degrees under those 
skilful, patient hands. We had used daily all the 
countless products of our factories, as if they grew 
on trees, with never a thought of the human muscle 
and nerve that went into them. In the cold twilight 
of winter mornings we had often heard, faint and 
far off, a factory whistle blow for work, and we had 
turned over to take another nap in our soft warm 
beds. But even then these girls were hurrying along 
the foggy streets, in which the street lamps still 
glimmered, shivering in the chill air. And when the 
big doors opened, after work, and they poured out 
into the street again, the sun was down, and they 
went home in another gas-lit twilight. 

Seasons changed, outside the factory, from white 
to green, to gold, to russet, back to white. Inside, 
it was only warmer or colder. Through dusty win- 
dow panes the sun peered in upon their work, and 
made a slightly varying figure on the floor, through 
all the year. In spring the windows were opened, 
and the little shiny leaves called, " Come gut — the 
woods are waiting.'' 



106 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

From the street below came up the sound of auto 
horns. Beautiful girls, in flower-like gowns, rode 
by on their way to entertainments or outings. 

But, like the Lady of Shalott, the girls at the 
looms could not leave their weaving to look down 
from the windows. Only in the mirror of their fan- 
cies did they see the pageant of the world go by, and 
the " knights come riding two by two.'' Or, per- 
haps, they saw it in the pages of a dime novel. 

Something of all this was borne in upon us as we 
passed down the ranks, chatting with the girls. It 
gave us confidence in our plan to know that the 
owners of the mills were in full sympathy with our 
project, and were ready to give us financial aid. The 
problem was, to win the confidence of the girls, to find 
out their needs, and secure their co-operation. 

Infinitely more tact was needed to approach the 
girls than had been needed for Friendly Visiting. 
Those we visited as " charity patients " had asked 
for help. These girls were as independent as we 
were. Not only had they not solicited our interest, 
but we were not sure whether they would take it. 
Some of the girls, in fact, did not need any help, for 
there were many who belonged to good families, of 
gentle breeding, with every safeguard thrown about 
them at home. 

Some were daughters of respectable, thrifty work- 



THE WORKING GIRLS 107 

ing men, others of widowed mothers who needed sup- 
port. 

But it was the girls of inferior parentage and 
poor or bad home surroundings in whom we were 
especially interested. 

As Miss Foster said, " The first class have their 
problems and temptations, as do all classes of girls, 
but they also have what the others lack — standards 
of conduct and resisting power. The girl who * just 
grows,' like a weed — what can be expected of her in 
the way of blossom and fruit? " 

Timing our visits at the noon hour, we found that 
many of the girls went home to lunch. But some of 
those who came across the town had brought a cold 
lunch, and were eating it at their work tables. The 
day of factory lunch and rest rooms had not yet ar- 
rived, and most of our factories were not built so as 
to have available space for them. Later, some of the 
managers of mills and laundries, etc., put them in, 
inspired, we felt, by the success of our plan. 

We found, as we went about, the girls of the cigar 
factories eating at the tables where they had rolled 
cigars, in the tobacco-heavy air. In the laundries, 
they had spread their lunch on the benches, amid the 
sudsy steam. In one factory, the girls sat in the 
windows, or on the linty floor, not having chairs. 
After lunch, some who did piece work rushed back to 



108 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

work without a breath of air, because they were 
anxious to make the extra money. They admitted 
that the " boss " had urged them to rest and exer- 
cise, but they wouldn't take the time. 

Some of the girls went out, bareheaded, to walk the 
street, their arm-in-arm line stretching across the 
sidewalk. We saw others romping with the men, in- 
side the factory entrance, A number testified that a 
" bunch '' of their mates had gone to a nearby saloon 
dining room, and gave a description of the savoury 
lunch served there. We met others buying candy or 
" sodies '' at a confectioner's, and saw a number 
munching cheese and crackers or bananas. 

The girls listened to our plan, some passively, some 
indifferently, others with interest. Out of them all 
we got enough promises of patronage to make us feel 
secure in our venture. 

Then our society called a mass meeting, and we 
gave the enterprise to the churches and clubs of the 
city, drawing the committees of our permanent organ- 
isation from them all, and making Miss Foster man- 
ager, by common consent. 

We found a place in the business district, conven- 
ient to various stores and factories, and large enough 
for our dining room, kitchen, rest and reading room, 
and lavatory. It was furnished simply, with rattan 
chairs and couches in the reading room, soft cush- 



THE WORKING GIRLS 109 

ions, sheer white curtains and flowers in the windows, 
and books and magazines on the big table — a taste- 
ful, homelike place. 

A happy committee prepared the first noon meal. 
An anxious committee sat and waited for the girls to 
arrive. Would they fail us? 

We all rose in a body and greeted the first girl 
who came in, and I know I embraced her. But we 
need not have been anxious. The girls poured in, 
and our success, on that side, was assured. 

Every one had wanted Miss Foster to be manager, 
and she proved to be the lodestone that drew the girls 
to our rooms. We found, as others have found, that 
nothing is so valuable to a work of this kind as the 
personality about which it centres. Not plans, not 
equipment, not anything can make up for that. 
There was something about her laughing brown eyes 
and her sweet low voice that the girls, and the rest 
of us, found irresistible. " What makes you so dif- 
ferent from us girls ? " one of them asked, worship- 
fully. It was those very differences that made them 
look up to her, but it was her sympathy and insight 
that made them bring their troubles, and open up 
their hearts to her. 

The good warm meals we furnished the girls, at 
an average of 11 cents (before meat and potatoes 
went so high) tempted many into our pleasant dining 



110 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

room. Many returned at night, when we moved back 
tables and chairs, and had a simple gymnasium. 
This drew better than cooking or sewing classes. 
'' Oh, we don't want to learn things, we just want to 
sing and dance and play, and have a good time," 
said one girl, who voiced the feelings of the others. 
Books failed to attract this type of girls, except the 
very lightest fiction. Our efforts to interest them 
in good books revealed many cases of arrested mental 
development. 

But they all took to the gymnasium. They liked 
the romping games, and the freedom of the bloomers. 
We had girls of all ages in the gymnasium classes. 
There were little stunted things, with white weazened 
faces and pink lidded eyes, who didn't look as if they 
could possibly be factory age. We had others who 
were pretty and plump and young, still others, angu- 
lar, bent and forty, so stiff from long bending over 
a machine that it was pathetic to see their exercises. 
But what rest these gave to tired backs, and how the 
colour came into pale cheeks, and the light into dull 
eyes, in a way it was good to see. 

The girls naturally fell into congenial groups. 
The younger ones wanted to take up amateur the- 
atricals (which resulted mostly in tableaux), and we 
humoured them, to keep them off the street. 

Our most devoted committee of social workers had 



THE WORKING GIRLS 111 

had long experience in free kindergarten work and 
mothers' meetings. This committee organised a sing- 
ing class, teaching, incidentally, many other things: 
They found that the girls knew only the songs of the 
street, but took readily to our good old classics. 
They were delighted with " Annie Laurie " and 
" Home, Sweet Home " — they were new to them ! 

After some of our classes we had a kind of 
" party " at our rooms. Then discipline was re- 
laxed, and every one performed, girls, leaders and 
all, in their own specialty. To be with the younger 
girls was like being with a set of big children, for 
their every emotion found outward expression. They 
grew most devoted to their leaders, and delighted to 
show their affection in smothering embraces, by so 
many strong young arms at once that one was swept 
off the floor. 

We found that our great problem was these 
younger girls, who were so easily taught, so readily 
interested. We learned how many temptations beset 
them, at every step, in the factory, on the street, 
sometimes in their own tenements. We learned how 
many of them had older sisters who had gone wrong, 
sometimes even mothers who set a dreadful example. 
Many of the older girls could not be won away from 
the streets, but the younger ones had not yet settled 
into any bad habits. If we could only show them 



112 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the dangers, and teach them to love better things! 
We gave the girls health talks, speaking to them 
simply and plainly. Among them we included a talk 
upon the care of the teeth. It happened that a 
handsome young dentist gave this talk, and, at the 
end, he gave opportunity for the girls to ask ques- 
tions, if they desired. 

A dead silence followed his remark. Finally, 
Clara, who had been eyeing the young man admir- 
ingly, blurted out, '' Say, where is your office at? " 

We had chosen, as the first president of our Work- 
ing Girls' Association, the wife of one of our mer- 
chants, a lady of many virtues and much wisdom, 
and, withal, a perfect housekeeper. It took all of 
these, and, oh, what devotion, to make our experiment 
a success in its first trying years. It took the de- 
votion of many others, too, who helped as directors 
or on committees. But there wasn't one of us who 
didn't get more out of it than we put into it, a hun- 
dred fold. What housewifely spirit does not delight 
to plan delicious menus at lowest cost? What moth- 
erly soul does not love to gather in those who are 
home-sick for a home they never possessed? 

Down in the bottom of our hearts we all realised 
how much of our abundance had gone to waste, for 
lack of ways to spend it. Not money, not goods, but 
richness of experience, fulness of life, love lavished 




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THE WORKING GIRLS 113 

on a few, hoarded within our own walls. It was a 
reKef to open the channels and let it flow out. 

Our work grew and broadened. We felt the need 
of dormitories, for so many girls were away from 
home, and boarded in the " hall bedroom '' we had 
read about. I was surprised to find these rooms just 
as miserable as they were pictured, for I had always 
supposed they belonged to fiction. How mean they 
were, — small, unheated, cheerless, ugly ! We felt 
the need of dormitories more keenly, after tramping 
the streets to find rooms for country girls, and find- 
ing that rooms in good districts were too expensive, 
and cheap rooms were not only miserable but generally 
not respectable. 

It was then that one of our leading philanthropists. 
Major A, C. Rosencranz, bought and presented to 
our association an old homestead, near Main Street. 
Now we had a real home, and we set about to make 
every room an object lesson. We rented the bed- 
rooms to as many girls as they would accommodate, 
but still the demands for rooms came in. Miss Fos- 
ter and I wanted to rent an adjacent dwelling for a 
dormitory, and provide it with a matron, letting the 
girls do co-operative housekeeping, or hire a cook, as 
their wages permitted, or take their meals at our 
Home. I had my eye on the entire row of houses, 
for the same purpose, and would have given each a 



114 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

" house mother," to supervise the company in the 
parlour, which was so sorely needed, and to look after 
the girls generally. The houses could have been self- 
supporting, we counted. There were plenty of home- 
less girls to fill them. Yet we were voted " plungers," 
and the idea was allowed to drop, for the time. But 
I've never given it up. 

When our good president was worn out with the 
work they made me take her place. The enterprise 
couldn't have been more on my heart, but the official 
position placed it more upon my shoulders. If it 
had not been for the faithful women who were help- 
ing, with heart and soul, and who had so much more 
experience than I, I shouldn't have dared. And 
then there was always a practical husband, and the 
experience of my mother and sisters to fall back 
upon. 

It was the making of me. To have to assume 
responsibility and make decisions, such as none of 
my other work had involved, developed the ability 
to do it. These things strengthen one's fibre won- 
derfully. I've seen it often, in the case of other 
women, who, all untried, were put at the head of some 
organisation. This very day, in churches and clubs, 
there are shy, diffident women, who shrink from doing 
any but the simplest part, in sheer timidity. And 
yet, if circumstances called them to a place of re- 



THE WORKING GIRLS 115 

sponsibility, they would amaze themselves and their 
community with their growing efficiency. 

The hardest duty of my new position was to give 
little talks to clubs and societies that we wanted to 
interest. But the ordeal became less severe each 
time. It was a pleasant duty, on the contrary, to 
write the newspaper articles that were necessary to 
win the interest of the public. The whole office force 
of the various newspapers took such a cordial interest 
in our work, from editors, reporters, even down to 
the office boys, and showed such a sympathy for the 
girls we were trying to help, that it made our task 
easy. The advertising they gave us was worth thou- 
sands of dollars if we had paid for the space, and they 
gave us editorials, good big headlines, " boxes," and 
even used my cartoons. 

Now my duties called me into still closer intimacy 
with the girls, and I came to see what fine qualities 
many of them had. And they were all so brave and 
cheerful. 

We had all classes, in our association, from those 
who performed the highest to the lowest grades of 
labour. Some of the stenographers, forewomen and 
heads of departments in stores formed an auxiliary, 
to help the others, and no support we received was 
so earnest. " We know how much a girl in business 
is up against," one of them said. 



116 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

How much, indeed ! They brought their stories to 
us, with all their troubles and perplexities. 

Some of them had troubles at home, of the most 
trying kind. Maggie's mother married the girl's 
step-father when he was drunk. A few months later 
he murdered the woman. Maggie could not speak 
of him without a dangerous gleam in her eyes. She 
would have felt justified in killing him, if ever the 
chance came. 

Sadie was only sixteen. Her mother was a bad 
woman, and all of her sisters had gone wrong. When 
she quarrelled with her father, we welcomed the 
chance to take her into our fold. She adored Miss 
Foster, clung to her, followed her to church, took her 
advice in every detail, and showed a horror of the 
way her family had gone. We kept her with us, got 
her a good position, and she has kept straight 
and true, and is turning out to be a fine, useful 
woman. 

It took us a long time to get used to some of the 
girls' ideas about marriage. It was an incident to 
many of them, and so was divorce. They would 
marry for a joke — on a bet — on the impulse of the 
moment. " Oh, well," they would say, " if he don't 
treat me right, I won't stay with him." Mamie, 
jilted by the man she expected to marry, shrugged 
her shoulders. Like so many of the girls, she was 



THE WORKING GIRLS 117 

corresponding with an unknown man. " I am ready 
to marry you/' she wrote him, and after an actual 
acquaintance of two weeks they were married. 

My worst shock came from an elderly spinster, 
whom I had supposed to be a pink of propriety. 
She surprised us first with the news that she was 
about to marry, and next with the announcement that 
she was not. 

" Why, what's happened? " we inquired. 

^' Oh, well, he done me dirt," she said irefully. 
" He promised to get a divorce, an' he never done it." 

I realised, in this work, how much my experience 
with my own house maids had prepared me for things 
I should hear. Some of them had worked before 
in restaurants, some in cotton mills, in the bottle-cap 
factory, laundries, cigar factories, etc., and most of 
them had been employed in other homes. Their odd 
ideas of caste, their startling slang, their ideals and 
standards, quite as startling, their queer ambitions, 
had opened my eyes to many things. 

From the country girls, many of them daughters 
of close-fisted German farmers, I got an idea of how 
barren and dull life in the country may be, under 
certain conditions, and could see why so many girls 
and boys come to town. They came to get, among 
other things, amusement, styles and cash, as well as 
independence, and they got everything they came 



118 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

for. It was astonishing to see how soon some of them 
learned to " make their hair," and acquire the walk 
and manner of the city bred. They would make as 
many sacrifices for style as any society leader. I 
remember what a hard time I had to prevail upon one, 
Lizzie, not to have all her pretty sound white teeth 
extracted so that she might have a complete set of 
false ones, as that was the height of fashion in 
Hochstadtl 

But think of those ignorant girls turned loose in 
the city, to find a factory job and a lodging place! 
With no place to receive callers, homesick, missing 
the sunny fields where they had tossed hay, missing 
their parents' stern discipline — how the lights of 
the street would lure them ! How the pretty things 
in the shop windows would tempt them! How they 
would accept even a stranger's company, from sheer 
loneliness ! Those other girls, whose " homes " were 
in the crowded tenements,— I knew why they pre- 
ferred to meet their company on the street. Some 
of them were so pretty, with delicately moulded fig- 
ures, which they decked in finery if they went hungry 
to pay for it. These girls were eager for the oppor- 
tunity of the sewing and millinery classes, to learn 
to make the pretty things they loved. When they 
were dressed with their best care, no one would guess 
the kind of homes they came from, until they began 



THE WORKING GIRLS 119 

to talk. Then we could understand why they wanted 
to make a good showing, and why they shrank in 
shame from letting a new and " swell " acquaintance 
see the wretched hole they lived in. Many of them 
lived, with a family of seven or more, in two rooms. 
Some even had one room, we knew, for we learned that 
our worst slums furnished some of the mill and factory 
girls. And in these dismal, dirty sties, where a 
drunken father, a scolding, worn-out mother, crying 
babies and fighting children made unpleasantness 
miserable and unattractiveness forbidding, there was 
not room for a caller to sit, or any quiet for con- 
versation. 

With all kinds of girls, except those who had good 
homes, we found this was a most serious problem — 
where to meet their young men friends. 

The girls had other problems, and clothing was 
one of them. We were glad when they came to us 
for advice about what to buy, for they wasted so 
much on shoddy material and extreme styles. It was 
hard to prevail on them to save for a rainy day, for 
it rained every day, in some of their lives. 

The girls who had sisters or friends who walked 
obliquely — and there were many — gave us the most 
anxiety. They had so little foundation upon which 
to build. They were so utterly ignorant of the 
simple, fundamental truths of life, and had no stan- 



120 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

dards, no source of inspiration. And, while we came 
in touch with several hundreds of girls, there were so 
many hundreds in the city that we had not yet 
reached, who needed direction and help just as badly, 
who had no one to turn to. 

This experience with working girls furnished the 
connecting link in the social study that I had begun 
with Friendly Visiting. Putting bit with bit, it was 
like matching the parts of a puzzle picture. It gave 
us the girl on the street, in the factory, in our asso- 
ciation rooms, in her home. 

No wonder many of the girls were sallow and dull 
eyed ; they slept in close, stuffy rooms, with from one 
to eight other occupants, and came and went, " be- 
tween the dark and murk,'' to and from a shop or 
factory, where they were shut away from the sun- 
shine, all day. Their food was insufficient or indi- 
gestible, very often. 

No wonder they met their company on the street, 
and went to wine rooms, dance halls, and other low 
places of amusement. Poor as those were, they were 
more attractive than their homes. 

No wonder they craved pleasure and pretty things. 
Their lives were colourless and dull and hard, their 
surroundings cheerless and ugly, at home and at the 
factory. 

No wonder they had no ideals, no standards, no 



THE WORKING GIRLS 121 

ambitions, worth the name. It would be a wonder 
if they had any. Where would they get them? 

Their need was so great, and it seemed so little 
that we could do. We furnished all the entertain- 
ment we could, concerts, " parties," and anything of a 
simple kind that they seemed to enjoy. And we 
came close to many of them. There were many sim- 
ple confessions that showed us our work really did 
help. 

Sometimes I had a little party, for our different 
classes of girls, at our own home, with music and 
games. As " working girls " our maids were wel- 
comed to these, and took part somewhat shyly. My 
young daughters entered heartily into their part, as 
hostesses, helping serve refreshments, and making the 
other girls feel at home. We never enjoyed any 
parties so much, and it was a pure joy to turn social 
precedents upside down, especially as it gave such 
pleasure. The girls always seemed to be happy, and 
sang their newly acquired songs, or recited, each one 
being called out. 

There was only one irksome task in connection 
with our work, and that was — raising funds. 

A certain part flowed in from willing givers. An- 
other part was ours for the asking and collecting. 
The rest had to be mined out, with blasting 
powder. We tried all kinds of publicity, besides the 



123 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

newspapers. The children and I got even down on 
the floor and made mammoth coloured posters, that 
are still extant. That was a pleasure, but when it 
came to begging! 

We came to a place where we would have broken 
rock in preference to asking another dollar. We 
feared we might earn the salute with which a well- 
known lady greeted an acquaintance who had oft 
come begging for worthy causes, but came one day, in 
brave attire, to make a social call. 

" And what do you want now? " asked the lady. 

There are many conditions which make it more 
blessed to give than to receive. 

We knew why some of our directors threw up their 
job of collecting when we had ladies tell us: "I 
can't say I sympathise with your work. I think if 
you didn't make things so easy for those girls they 
would be in our kitchens, where they belong. No 
wonder we can't keep cooks." 

No wonder, we thought ! We were receiving much 
light on the servant problem. 

It was useless to argue with those ladies that these 
girls were free American citizens, and that some of 
them were of as good families and as cultured as 
they were ; that the other kind of girls, of the lower 
class, had grown up untrained, with the idea of being 
factory workersj^ and it was ai5 hopeless to try to 



THE WORKING GIRLS 123 

domesticate them now as to teach charity to the 
selfish and narrow-minded. We simply took our les- 
son in this new field of sociology. This work was 
" awful educatin'," as the saleswoman said of the 
geography game. 

We never had to make these explanations to the 
men. Like the auxiliary young women, they knew 
what the girls were " up against." And the way 
they gave was worth as much as the money, for they 
had the chivalry that made them see how hard it was 
for us to ask, and that brought a look of pity into 
their eyes when we told them about the girls. It was 
to them we turned when weary with preaching the 
needs of women to other women's ears. 

As the cost of living went up, it seemed that do- 
nations went down. One after another our collectors 
resigned, and our fund was dwindling. Once more 
Miss Foster and I started out with the twins in the 
carriage. From factory to factory we went, hitching 
at the ofBce door, and entering like a troubadour 
quartette. 

But we just couldn't keep that up ! 

The Y. W. C. A. had long wanted an opening in 
our city. Here was a hole. Why was it not an 
opening ? 

No one had to explain what a Y. W. C. A. was, or 
why it was a good thing. Every one who had daugh- 



124 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

ters could understand what a fine thing it would be 
for them. 

And here was the foundation, ready to set the new 
work upon. 

So we re-organised, opening up into the larger 
work. And, as soon as it was smoothly running, we 
got an extension secretary to care for our working 
girls. Now they have a fine gymnasium, a swim- 
ming pool, and a bigger dormitory. 

Miss Foster had refused many calls to a larger 
field, making a sacrifice for the purpose of working 
out her ideas about the working girls. At last she 
accepted one of the calls, and we lost her. 

There is one happy memory that our girls will 
never lose, nor shall we. That is our summer camp, 
and I've saved it to tell last, to take away the 
metallic taste of the money part. 

Some of our girls never got a vacation. They 
couldn't aff^ord the trip, nor the loss of time. We 
decided to bring the vacation to them. There was a 
pretty oak grove near the end of one of our trolley 
lines, where we made our camp. Here we built two 
large bungalows, with screened open sides; one for 
a living room, dining room and kitchen, the other for 
a sleeping room and lockers. We had several tents, 
and, as our needs grew, we planned to use old street 
cars, emptied of seats, for sleeping rooms. 




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THE WORKING GIRLS 125 

For a five-cent fare the girls went to and from 
their work, having the evening and night at the 
camp, with supper and breakfast, and the whole long 
Sunday to stroll or to rest in hammocks. 

The Public Service Company had donated strings 
of electric lights, all about our camp, so that we could 
have evening games and entertainments. What ap- 
petites the fresh air gave our girls! How soundly 
they slept, with the starlight sifting through the 
laced branches, the sound of sleepy birds and drowsy 
insects, and the leaves whispering " sh-sh — sleep 
and rest ! " 

The girls took a new lease on health, and a larger, 
firmer hold on life. We came closer to them, so as 
to enter into their spiritual life, in twilight walks 
down country lanes, or talks about the embers of our 
camp fire. 

One striking thing about the camp life was the 
way it obliterated all lines of caste. We, who never 
thought about such things, had been surprised to 
find how real it was to some of the girls. For in- 
stance, in the cotton mills, the weavers would not 
associate with the spinners. Cigar factory girls were 
discriminated against by some others. Shop girls 
looked down on factory girls, and these, in turn, felt 
superior to domestic servants. 

But this all faded away at the camp. Several 



126 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

cooks, who were having a sure-enough vacation, 
walked arm in arm with the stenographers, and the 
young ladies who came to help entertain us. 

I must confess that it was a little of a surprise 
to me, after I had given a Sabbath afternoon talk 
on " The God of the Open Air,'' to find that the most 
discriminating approval was expressed by two of 
these cooks. 

It was really beautiful to note the good fellowship 
that, without familiarity or presumption, or any loss 
of dignity, took in the whole circle about the camp 
fire. 

I thought this chapter was going to close with the 
closing of the camp, and a new regime. But, even 
as I write, comes word that the camp is to be opened 
again, next summer, for the working girls. There 
is a pretty story, too, of the enthusiastic devotion 
that they transferred to their new leader, Miss Vera 
Campbell, which is another proof of the power of 
personality. The best of the story is about her work 
among the laundry girls, which was so appreciated 
that the laundry gave her a wonderful party, in which 
both the management and the helpers took part, and 
fathers, mothers, even babies, were included. 

And so our work is growing, even beyond our 
dreams. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE POOR AND THEIR POVERTY 

THE WRECK ^ 

We found a wreck cast up on the shore. 
Battered and bruised, and scarred and rent. 

And I spoke aloud, " Here was worthless work. 
And a barque unfit to the sea was sent." 

But he said, my friend, in his gentler mood, 
"Nay, none may say but the work was good, 

For who can tell of the seas it sailed. 

Of the waves it braved, and the storms withstood?" 

Then we spoke no more, but I mutely mused. 
And I thought, " Oh, heart and oh, life of man. 

That we find wrecked, we may never know 
How brave you were when your course began ! " 

This chapter Is not about those of whose ** short and 
simple annals " Gray wrote. It is not of those to 
whose " honest poverty " Burns referred. Nor does 
it treat of any who can sing, " Be it ever so humble." 
All of these may have been poor, but they were not 
" The Poor." There is fresh air blowing through 
every one of those poems. They breathe of all that 
is wholesome, tender, sacred, the real riches of life. 

1 Published originally in 1888 in Mrs. Bacon's and Mrs. 
Johnston's collection of verse, Songs Ysame. 

127 



128 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

But one cannot write a pastoral poem about the 
poor. There is no song of the lark over their heads, 
to weave into the verse, no " lowing herds," no fire- 
side circle, with its *' peace of heart.'^ Instead, there 
is the Wolf outside the door, howling to the dark. 
And those who hide and cower inside are the ones we 
call " the submerged," the Children of the Shadow. 
For the most part, in our country, they are the chil- 
dren of the city and the town. 

Distance, perspective, " chiaro^oscuro," may be to 
blame, rather than our eyes, that we see the poor as 
a mass of shadow, painted in one flat grey wash, at 
the remote edges of our sunshine. In fact, they are 
generally spoken of in that way, as if that one drab 
word named, defined and classified all who were over 
the line, on the shadow side. And there is so often 
reproach in the word, and abhorrence in the tone with 
which it is spoken, that I am fain to plead for them 
a better acquaintance and a fairer judgment. That 
is why I am writing this chapter, to bring the poor 
nearer, as with a sort of field glass, to those who have 
never really known them. 

It cannot be gainsaid that the majority of people 
in any city know nothing about the poor. I have 
found, by investigations in many cities and towns, 
that, outside of a limited circle of charitable people, 
and a number of ministers, doctors and policemen, no 



THE POOR 129 

one could give any trustworthy information about the 
number or condition of the poor. While there may 
even be large societies with many committees, whose 
members give much time to planning charity work 
(much of which must consist in raising funds) and 
while these members even " bestow their goods to feed 
the poor," so often the actual visiting of the poor is 
done by the secretary, and a few committee members. 

The same is true of the churches, where only a 
limited percentage of those who give ever get inside 
of the homes of the poor. By those who go the tale 
is brought back to the meeting, and passed on, sec- 
ond-hand and so on ; so that " the quality of mercy '^ 
is " strained," through a great many sieves. The 
smell, the dirt, the misery, are mostly filtered out 
through the first medium through which the tale 
passes, and the colourless, sterilised material which 
flows on cannot make any one feel badly enough to 
be a missionary. 

It is noticeable that we can bear with great philoso- 
phy the sufferings of others, especially if we do not 
actually see them. But, to be truly and consistently 
charitable, we must believe that those who speak most 
harshly of the poor are like the little girl who could 
not be cured of biting other children until some one 
bit her. Up to that time she had no idea that it 
really hurt. It is those who have never been bitten 



130 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

by the things that hurt the poor who criticise them. 
One of those who " stood afar off " sat by me one 
day, at an elegant luncheon, and divided her time 
between polite inquiries about my work, and impolite 
remarks about the poor. After worming out of me 
what the tenement law would give to the latter, in 
the way of water, plumbing, etc., she expressed her- 
self strongly as to the waste of such things on the 
poor, who were " filthy," and " would put coal or 
vegetables in the bath tubs,'^ who '' didn't appreciate 
anything done for them," were " destructive to prop- 
erty," etc. 

" But the law doesn't give them bath tubs," I tried 
to say, with no chance to enlarge on the fitness of pro- 
viding them for those who were " filthy." When her 
tirade abated I ventured, 

" May I ask whether you have gone much among 
the poor? " " Oh, mercy, no," she answered, in a 
tone of horror and disgust. " I couldn't bear to mix 
with that kind of creatures." 

And then I couldn't refrain, " I judged so, for I 
never heard any one speak of them that way, who 
really knew them." 

" Why do you spend your time and strength for 
that kind of trash? " a friend asked me. " If they 
were deserving, or appreciate what you do, even, it 
wouldn't be so bad." 




bo 









T H E P R 131 

Even those who work among them often fail to 
measure them by fair standards. " You can't be- 
lieve anything one of them says," complained a girl 
who taught a mission class. If we must make people 
see that it is those who are sick, and not the well, 
who need a physician, may we not also call in an 
optician? 

" The poor are so miserable, and they make every 
one about them so miserable, isn't it a pity they can't 
all die off, like flies, in the winter? " 

The girl who asked that, in unsmiling jest, was 
working then to the point of exhaustion, out of sym- 
pathy for the poor. 

The protest I want to make is against the two 
commonest but greatest errors. One is, the unfair- 
ness of speaking of the poor, in one contemptuous 
breath, as if they were all of one class, and 
all degraded. The other is, the assumption that 
the poor have peculiar faults and vices which make 
them odious, and differentiate them from all the rest 
of society. 

For the first, let me say that when we come close 
enough to the Shadow so that we can distinguish 
tones and values, we see that there are different types 
and groups, and that some are plunged much deeper 
than others. Then we notice individuals standing 
out clearly, and we are struck by the marks of their 



133 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

unlikeness to the rest, as if they belonged to a higher 
plane. There are so many among them who have 
been well born, well educated, reared in comfort, often 
in luxury. Some have but lately fallen, and are still 
dazed by the shock. Having lost only fortune, and 
retaining still their habits of culture, they are no 
more of the underworld than the spirit of Dante was 
of the Inferno. In a study of poverty there is little 
more to say of them than could be said of any victim 
of a wreck or explosion. But in a study of the poor 
our first care must be to save these victims from the 
common scorn, and to ask for them the sympathy that 
is their due. 

Even more pitiful are those who have come, by a 
slow and hard descent, from wealth to want. Decay 
is sadder than wreckage. " A decayed gentle- 
woman " is a product of pinched, painful years. 
We have found, in our slums, some old couples, once 
prosperous and happy, who had gradually lost all 
they had, and were now fighting, with their last 
feeble effort, against going to the alms-house, and 
had planned suicide together if the last resort failed. 

In stifling garrets, in dark tenements of our cities, 
are hidden away many tragedies, as sad as any 
Dickens ever wrote, that will remain sealed until the 
Day of Judgment unless some friendly hand unclasps 
the volume. When the story ends with the death of 



THE POOR 133 

the aged, the end is a happy event. But if there be 
a sequel through succeeding generations, it may grow 
more and more tragic. The outcome of the story 
will depend largely upon where the scene is laid. In 
other words, the matter of environment will be an 
enormous factor in the rise or decline of the family. 

All the way down, through lessening degrees of 
original culture and wealth, to the very lowest strata, 
we find people who have been thrown under by a sud- 
den turn of the wheel of fortune. Many of them can 
be helped onto their feet once more. Many are so 
broken in health or in spirit that they will never 
rise again. 

One can tell, by a certain air, or frost in the air, 
those who have " seen better days." Often there will 
be some heirloom left, some picture, or a piece of 
furniture that tells the tale. The next generation 
may still retain the furniture, and a trace of the cul- 
ture, like the worn gilding on a tarnished mirror, but 
if the children stay in the slums they will be of a 
different type. 

A woman of the second generation of slum dwellers, 
and of common-place origin, came once to iron for 
me. There was a thrifty strain in her, from some 
antecedent, that made a puzzling mixture with her 
" poor- folksy '' air. Thinking to encourage her, I 
praised her ironing. 



184 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

'^ Yes," she said, airily, " I think I do arn pretty 
well, considerin' I haint amed fer so long. We used 
to hev a' arn, but now it's gone." 

*^ How do you manage ? " I asked, quite puzzled. 

<< W'y, we jes' fold th' clo'es, an' put 'era in th' 
trunk. But I do think they look better arned," she 
added. 

The next generation will probably wear their clothes 
both unwashed and unironed. 

One of the points I want to emphasise is that sev- 
eral generations of slum environment will produce a 
slum heredity, and the children will have that to con- 
tend with, as well as the slum environment. In our 
slums are girls who never saw a room properly 
cleaned, or ate a meal properly cooked, and neither 
did their mothers or their grandmothers. There was 
" nothing to do with," of course. They had no 
proper utensils or materials. There may have been 
wealth, even nobility, away back in that family, but 
it " buttered no parsnips," and provided no soap. 
The use of the right forks comes only by using forks. 
No matter how many Greek professors grace one's 
ancestry, or how many clergymen bless it, the de- 
scendant will lisp in Billingsgate, if he hears nothing 
else. 

The daily lesson of slum life, visualised, reiterated, 
of low standards, vile living, obscenity, profanity, 



THE POOR 135 

impurity, is bound to be dwarfing and debasing to 
the children who are in the midst of it. Even in the 
second generation these influences are blackening and 
corroding enough to destroy the faint impression of 
" where mother used to live,'' and " what father used 
to do." By the third generation, even that back- 
ground is lacking. 

I cannot enlarge upon the deterioration of families, 
through successive generations of slum life, without 
considering the effect of the sub-normal environment 
upon the normal family, in the case of our working 
classes. And this makes me boU over again. 

The outrage of our American cities is the way we 
bid for home-seekers, when we have no homes to offer 
them, after we lure them to come. Our factories 
scour the country for workers, bring them in, and 
turn them loose, to find shelter wherever they can. 
Our business organisations offer bonuses for new 
factories, bidding for those which bring in the largest 
number of families. "Another factory! 100 fam- 
ilies ! More prosperity ! '' they announce, in big head- 
lines. 

And the families? As lightly as a chemist pours 
drugs from one vial into another, these human beings 
are transferred from one environment to another. 
The fact that a city has not already enough decent 
houses for all its population, and that its poor are 



136 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

living in sties, causes no one any concern. When the 
workmen cojme with their families, many of them 
have to crowd into filthy, unsanitary tenements with 
the poor, and subject their children to the companion- 
ship of the vicious and degraded. The fact that the 
working man could afford more rent, and would gladly 
pay more for a better house, makes no difference. 
His family must have shelter. He shelters them 
where he can. 

" The workmen have all found homes," we are told. 

"Homes"? Where? 

One of the saddest sights of the slums is to see 
the thrifty wife of the working man, with her rosy 
brood of children, used to country air and sunshine, 
used to space, privacy, good surroundings, cleanli- 
ness, quiet, shut up amid the noise and dirt and con- 
fusion, in the gloom of the slum. That is an unusual 
family that can maintain the sanctity of its home 
life in the tenements of a bad neighbourhood, where 
there is no privacy, that can hold the children under 
strict discipline, if they are too large to shut inside 
the rooms, and must go to school or to work. If the 
father be not drawn to the saloon, and the boys and 
girls to the street, they must be both Spartan and 
Puritan. The brave fight may be made if the father 
and mother are spared, to hold control, and provide 
the bread. But how many working men in our 



THE POOR 137 

cities, the records show, fall a prey to tuberculosis, 
typhoid, pneumonia, and other " house diseases " ! 
How many mothers are beckoned from their little 
families by the same ghastly finger! Any one who 
win search the records will find that a startling num- 
ber of dependent families become so on account of 
death or prolonged Illness of the bread-winner. 

And the children? 

The ranks of the dependent and delinquent are re- 
cruited — In what percentage we ought to know, but 
any percentage Is too large — from the families 
of the working-men that are brought Into our 
cities and dumped Into our dilapidated old death- 
traps. 

And so I say that the responsibility is upon those 
who Import working-men to see that there are decent 1 
homes for them when they come, and not to set snares 
to destroy them and their children. 

When we come to consider the lowest strata of the 
poor, we find defectives, degenerates and their broth- 
ers, those who feed our institutions over which the 
State has care, and who are in turn recruited by the 
classes just above, as well as by their own offspring. 
It is these who give to all the poor the stigma of 
being " filthy,'' " shiftless,'' and all the other odious 
epithets. Here, " at the bottom," we find we are 
dealing with quantities less variable. We often say 



138 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

that riches and poverty are only comparative. In 
its lowest deeps poverty is almost absolute. 

" He that is down need fear no fall," except to fall 
into a pit. Sickness, injury, accident, are the pits 
the poor dread, and well they may, as our Nurse's 
Circle found. Now I am reminded that the poor have 
their own pleasures and enjoyments, and I know 
that many funny stories are written about certain 
types. But these are the child-like, irresponsible 
ones, with natures of cork, who have never grown 
up, and never will. They can lock the Wolf in the 
closet, with the Skeleton, for the day, any time, and, 
following the hurdy-gurdy whither it whines, set off 
for a merry vagabondage. It is true, there are al- 
ways humorous things coming up in the discussion 
of charity cases, odd mistakes and droll conversa- 
tions. But, thinking them over, with their setting, 
one finds that they are much like the relief scenes in 
" Macbeth.'' 

Whatever any one may say of the lowest types of 
the poor, I hold that all of the faults ascribed to 
them are due to their being either undeveloped or 
defective, and the worse the fault the more defective- 
ness it shows. This is my one plea for those who 
cannot employ their own advocate, and who need one 
most. The bold and bad can make their own de- 
fence. The sharp and shrewd may find their own 







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T H E P R 189 

excuses. But for these, who are always absent when 
they are maHgned, let this plea prevail. 

It hurts me to hear the tone in which the poor are 
condemned as " shiftless," or " having a pauper 
spirit," just as it would if a crowd mocked at a child 
for its weakness, or laughed at a lame man because 
he could not run^ or a blind man because he stum- 
bled. 

The poor are lame, maimed, halt, blind, in a way. 
They may not be defective enough to admit them to 
an asylum, but they are too defective, mentally and 
physically, to keep up in the race. They cannot see 
as we do, and have inhibitions that hold them back 
even from the good they see. 

" Lazy " ! Some of them are ^' born tired," and 
enter into life without their share of vigour or vi- 
tality. Some of their mothers were overworked and 
under-nourished, perhaps scrofulous. Some of them, 
themselves, are over-worked and under-fed, or have 
lost their efficiency through illness or exposure. And 
they breathe poisonous air, sleeping in unventilated 
quarters, six or twelve in a room. They drink sew- 
age-poisoned water, that makes people lethargic and 
dull. 

As to the poor — many, not all of them — being 
*^ filthy," we must admit the fact, but we insist on 
the reason. As to their " preferring to be filthy," I 



140 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

have said enough in other chapters of the heroic 
efforts some of them make to be clean, I wonder, 
as I see them carrying water so far, and up and 
down stairs, how they have the heart to do it. I 
wonder how many of us would try as hard to be clean. 
One marvels at the persistence of the conception of 
purity in our slums, and marvels, too, that the seven 
plagues have not swept the poor, and us along with 
them, off the earth. 

It is so easy to account for the faults of the poor. 
It is their virtues that are unaccountable. We find 
many cases of heroism, in their struggle against des- 
perate odds. The generosity of the poor is pro- 
verbial, and seems to be in inverse proportion to 
their possessions. It is a common thing to find a 
family giving up one of their rooms to another fam- 
ily. We knew of a family in two rooms giving one 
to a woman who was dying with tuberculosis. It is 
not unusual for one or more waifs to be taken into a 
home, even though the meagre supply of food and 
clothing is already insufficient. 

A most remarkable case was that of a woman who 
adopted the deformed idiot boy I spoke of seeing on 
my first round of the slums. He died some months 
ago, and we heard then the strange story of his life. 
His mother died when he was a little child and he 
was adopted by a friend of hers whp was no rela- 



THE POOR 141 

tion, or, at least, only the half aunt of his step 
father. The boy grew to be a terrible burden, be- 
ing large and heavy, and unable to walk, or to do 
anything for himself, and had to be cared for and 
wheeled about like a baby, even in his teens. Yet 
the woman clung to him, and gave him the most 
devoted care, refusing to go to her family, with mar- 
vellous self-denial. By the time he died she was a 
physical wreck, completely worn out. 

As I write these things there comes over me again 
that feeling that always overwhelms me when I look 
out upon an audience of well-dressed, well-fed, well- 
housed people, and note the sheen of silk and the 
glisten of jewels. How can we put the story of 
Poverty's Children into the vocabulary of these Chil- 
dren of the Sunshine? , How can we explain to those 
who have to diet, as a penalty for high living, or 
who have to take tonics to create an appetite, what 
real hunger means ? So with the fears and anxieties, 
and all the rest of the troubles of the poor. 

The same words do not mean the same thing to 
them and to us. " Safety '' — that is a thing we 
rarely think of, except when we travel. In our homes 
we tuck our children into soft white beds, bolt doors 
and windows, and, with a comfortable thought, in the 
background, of Providence, our good man, and the 
police, sleep with no thought of fear, 



142 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

I know of mothers who have to lock their little 
children into their tenement rooms when they go to 
work for the day. Others have told me that they 
have to hurry home, after washing, for fear their 
little girls will get home first, from school, in terror 
lest they fall into the hands of one of the low drunken 
lodgers in the place. There are mothers who trem- 
ble when an ambulance or a patrol wagon rumbles by, 
and who hide their little ones under the ragged cov- 
erlet when the noise of heavy feet on the stair tells 
that a carousal is over or a fight is on. And if the 
daughter steals in later, ofi^ the street, they are thank- 
ful that she comes in at all. 

" But the lowest types, not having our sensibili- 
ties, cannot suffer so keenly,'^ people say. 

If they have not our refined anguish, neither have 
they our higher consolations. Superstition shadows 
the poor with countless fears, as we find at every 
turn. Some writers dwell strongly on the paralysing 
terror of want, the fear that the Wolf will actually 
end them. Do they fear it so, those half brothers 
of Romulus, who have known only that same shaggy 
foster mother? Or do they think of her as Hood's 
seamstress thought of Death — " I hardly fear his 
terrible shape, it seems so like my own.'' The higher 
types do show this fear, with an equal dread of the 
almshouse. The thought of a pauper burial preys 




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T H E P R 143 

upon them, too. Some of them will take us to a little 
battered trunk, and show us, folded away, the clean 
sheets, the coarse shroud, and the small sum of money, 
saved, though they starve, so they " can be put away 
right." 

The matter of " sensibilities " is made so much of 
that one would be led to believe, almost, that the ques- 
tion of the shabbiness of the poor is a question of 
poor taste, and not of a poor purse. " Pore folks 
has pore ways," of necessity. But the discussion of 
the ragged children over the dress in the shop window 
was significant. '' If it's pretty, it costs, and if it 
costs, we caint git it." 

Our Flower Mission girls had many tales to tell 
of the craving of the poor for beauty, for finer things, 
often for higher things. One of them made a con- 
quest of a group of girls in a tenement neighbour- 
hood. Their admiration reached the point of want- 
ing to copy her dress, her hat, and her coiffure, and 
she actually took down her beautiful hair to show 
them how she arranged it. 

Girls who live in the dismal slum and work in the 
dingy factory, going to and fro past the brilliant 
shops, seem to have a special hunger for the bright 
pretty things they cannot afford. Some feed their 
souls on beads, cheap lace and pathetic millinery, as 
inadequately as they do their bodies on " sodies " or 



144 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

popcorn balls. Many of them acquire remarkable 
taste, and develop a desire to be " stylish," trying 
to keep as close as possible to the heels of fashion, 
which, with their limited means, often makes them 
as grotesque as our actual shadows. 

A girl who was shivering, coatless, in a freezing 
wind, thankfully received a good and comfortable 
wrap. She put it on joyfully, then looked it up and 
down with an expression of uncertainty. " Is it in 
style?" she asked anxiously. 

The instalment store man knows full well of the 
craving of the slum dwellers for brightness and 
beauty. He sends shiny things and rugs of glowing 
colours to their doors, and they cannot resist them, 
any more than they could resist holding out cold 
hands to a fire. Having no idea of value or economy, 
they take these articles, at enormous prices, perhaps 
to lose both the coveted treasure and their money, 
when they fail to make payments. But we can't 
blame them. If I had to live in one of those grue- 
some holes I would go without bread for a red rug. 

While I am answering for the poor, let me speak 
of the " pauper spirit." It is the spirit that the 
skilful worker tries to supplant by pride and inde- 
pendence, but unless there has once been a spark, it is 
hard to start a flame. And why should one have 
pride, when he has nothing to be proud of? 



THE POOR 145 

" My grandfather was a squire,'' a poor woman 
said proudly, and at the word all her ragged children 
held their heads a little higher. We knew that they 
might go bare, but they would never beg. But those 
who have had no grandfather, or, sadder still, 
no father, should not have so much expected of 
them. 

The pauper spirit, when exhibited by shrewd peo- 
ple, of a higher type, is quite a different spirit from 
that of the born pauper. 

" I can't think of asking charity," said a woman 
who had been " working " many of our generous citi- 
zens, " so I came to ask your help. You have influ- 
ence and affluence, and I need your aid." Those 
were her exact words. 

Another appeal, by letter, from a distant town, 
expressed confidence in my generous and noble heart 
(as per some newspaper account) and, explaining the 
needs of the young lady of the house, asked for a set 
of parlour furniture. Every one in public life re- 
ceives such appeals from unknown people. 

With those who are really helpless, weak and ig- 
norant, the pauper spirit seems to be a touching 
confidence in a higher power. " If the people that 
'tends to things could see the awful place I live in, 
they'd surely do something about it," said one old 
woman who came to ask for help with her rent. 



146 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

" The pauper spirit " — what is it, in such as 
these, but the spirit in which the child cries for food, 
the spirit in which we make most of our prayers, 
those that are not communion or thanksgiving, but 
simply appeals for material blessings? 

We all agree that if any trait belongs exclusively 
to the poor it should be this one. Yet we find it in 
all walks of life. What traits can be found, then, 
that mark only the poor? 

If we try by elimination to discover their peculiar 
faults and vices, we find none that are not shared by 
some members of the wealthy and middle class. 
Going over the catalogue of their reproaches, we 
cannot find any that can even be applied to all the 
poor. " Lazy, shiftless, improvident, spendthrift, in- 
temperate, lacking in honour, in honesty," these do 
not differentiate the poor, even those to whom these 
epithets apply; they only show their fellowship with 
the weak and low of other classes. 

After all, nothing seems completely to differenti- 
ate the poor but poverty. We find no adjectives to 
fit them, as a whole, only those of which Want is the 
mother. " Miserable " covers many ; " shabby,'' 
most, and I am sadly aware that, in a large majority 
of minds, " disagreeable " includes them all. 

Shadows, they are, indeed ; not remote, as we may 
think of them, but here, at our side, at our back, 



THE POOR im 

flitting across our path, weaving about us the dark 
web of their own misfortunes. 

But because we are ignorant about the poor, we 
need not assume that they know as little about us. 

It is surprising, sometimes, what close track they 
keep of us. In one of our largest tenements I found 
one day an old retainer of my mother's, who used 
to wash my tiny frocks, and had been a valued servant 
in the days of her strength. We had lost sight of 
her, and it was a shock to find her there. She was 
as delighted to see me as if I were kin, and asked 
about each member of the connection, commenting 
upon their recent doings with so much accuracy that 
I was amazed. " How do you keep track of them 
all?'' I asked, knowing she never saw them. "Oh, 
we take a newspaper here, and read about all of you," 
she answered. I found that all the tenants con- 
tributed to the subscription for one paper, which was 
passed about from hand to hand until it was worn 
out. It gave me a new sensation, that of turning 
the field glass the other way. 

How do we look to them? 

It is a good thing to cross over the line and take 
a look at ourselves, and at our belongings, from their 
viewpoint. How rich, how blest we feel, when we 
come back to our own homes ! I always breathed a 
sigh of gratitude, when I got home, that I didn't 



148 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

have to wash for a large family, and have a drunken 
husband who beat me. 

I have always brought two other thoughts home 
from those visits. One is, " How much alike we all 
are ! '' The other is, " What would I do if I had to 
live in that dreadful place, and could do no better 
for my children? '' And that is the only fair way to 
consider the question. What would we do, if any of 
us had such a fate? If we had to be crowded and 
stifled in dark rooms, to breathe foul air and chok- 
ing odours, to fight filth, to endure noise, to drink 
polluted water, to be seized upon by disease? 

Ah, if that were our baby that sickened and wasted 
and moaned and died! Would we join with those 
of the sullen brow who are " destructive," because, 
as they tell us, wrathfuUy, they'd " like to git even 
with the landlord"? Or would we be one of the 
larger number who give up the struggle, hopelessly, 
overcome by that deadliest of all inhibitions of the 
poor, " What's the use "? We hear that often in the 
tenements. '' What's the use to be careful of drop- 
ping ashes and garbage on the stairs, or throwing 
suds on the walk, when the other tenants do it ? " 
" What's the use to scrub, when the grime won't 
come out, and the soot keeps pouring in? " '' What's 
the use to take keer of a house when the landlord 
won't fix the locks or steps or roof? " 




s 



THE POOR 149 

New-comers to a tenement must be of strong fibre 
if they resist such pressure. In this connection one 
recalls the most frequent objection made to housing 
reform, that the poor would misuse and wouldn't 
" appreciate " conveniences if they had them. A 
chorus of those whose model tenements are now bless- 
ing the poor will contradict this statement. In any 
place and to any extent that it might be true, it is a 
startling comment upon our civilisation and the se- 
verest condemnation of us who have not taught them 
what is proper and decent. 

I trust that those friends of the poor who object 
to the use of the word " slum,'' because " it is such 
a reproach to the poor, who can't help living there," 
will be satisfied with these statements. The slum is 
not a reproach to the poor, but to the landlords, to 
the public, to us. Let us call things by their right 
names, and place the blame where it belongs, and 
it will hasten the day of the deliverance of the 
poor. 

It has been my dearest hope to win for the poor a 
closer view and a kinder opinion, yet I fear these re- 
citals will not tempt any one to go and see for them- 
selves how they actually live. 

" I went once, and I'll never go again, because it 
made me so blue," said one dainty lady. 

*^ And it's way across the town, in such a dis- 



150 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

agreeable part, among the railroad tracks and mean 
streets, where it's bad to take an auto," others say. 

"My business never calls me into those districts 
•where one would find slums," men tell us. 

It is a restful delusion, but slums are not all across 
the town. There may be some families living in 
squalor in the alley back of one's office. Men may 
pass the respectable fronts of these places every day, 
and they may even be on a rear street, near their 
own homes. 

"I'm afraid of bringing home contagion to my 
children," says the devoted mother. 

" There is no need to worry about bringing home 
contagion," we say, " for the children will bring it 
home to you. They will acquire other things, too, 
from the children of the slums whom they meet on the 
street and in the public schools, other things that 
they will not come to you with, for you would not 
allow them to repeat the words and tales they hear." 
We may as well face the fact that so long as we 
and our children are at large in a community, we 
shall be in danger from all the evils that are also at 
large in that community, even those that emanate 
from the lowest and vilest sources. We might shut 
our children up in our homes, but even there they 
are not safe, for they must breathe the common sup- 
ply of air, and the air, breath, gases and vapours of 



THE POOR 151 

the whole community have been pooled. And, though 
we may be able to exclude from our homes the moth, 
the house-fly, the agent and the burglar, we cannot 
exclude germs. They ride in on the trails of our 
gowns, they are tracked in on our shoes. They come 
in food and drink, in washes, in clothing, in wares. 
They come by messengers and carriers and servants, 
as do the influences of evil. 

So, if we expect to remain in a community and 
not share its evils, we must isolate our entire house- 
hold, provide disinfected air for them to breathe, and 
allow them to eat, drink and wear only boiled things. 
We must not allow them to look out of the window, 
at bill boards, etc., nor listen to the songs of the 
street, and we must take out the 'phone. But we 
need not go to the slums if we do not wish. They 
will come to us, and, wreaking upon us the Revenge 
of Neglected Things, they will avenge the poor. 

Yet it is not vengeance the poor are wanting. 
They want only help, and they do not dream how 
much we could give them, besides alms. They stand 
afar ofi^, and look at us, beseeching, too timid to knock 
at our forbidding portals. But the White Death, 
who has been their bedfellow, is not abashed by any 
grandeur, or stopped by any bar. He comes straight 
from the filthy hovel to our homes, and peers in 
upon us through the windows, while we feast and 



152 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

laugh. He pushes open the door, and strides in, 
and, sitting down at our very fireside, looks inta 
the faces of our best beloved, so that they cry out 
and die ! 

The revenge of the slums falls not only upon the 
individual, but upon the city, in all its interests and 
activities. 

It falls upon the city in losses of lives and money, 
taxes paid for pauperism, for crime, for the cost of 
disease. 

It falls upon the civic organisations that ignore 
the slums, by the blight of their very ugliness and 
meanness, which frightens renters and buyers from 
the neighbourhood, and injures all adjacent property. 

It falls upon them, too, by breeding a class of 
citizens that are a dead weight to civic progress. 

It falls upon the business interests by killing or 
weakening valuable working men, whose loss is felt in 
traffic, trade and manufacture. 

It falls upon the churches by raising up those 
who defeat and defy them, by lowering the 
moral tone of the whole community, and increasing 
the resistance to the powers of good. These are the 
ways in which we are scourged by the slums, and 
until we learn our lesson we must continue to suffer, 
as. well as the poor. 

"The Poor'M There passes before me a proces- 





A wretched interior^ crowded with many families 
Behind the bill-board 



THE POOR 153 

sion of those whom I have seen in the alms-houses, 
the reformatories, the tenements, the hovels of our 
country. With downcast, hopeless faces, with fal- 
tering steps, with groping hands, they file past. 
Some are ragged, filthy, scarred, diseased. Some 
are pallid, starved, pitiful. Side by side, step by 
step with them, march those who are of different 
blood and birth. One holds out beggar hands, one 
covers his face in bitter humiliation. Grey as a pro- 
cession of shadows, grey as a drift of ashes, and with 
ashes upon their heads — that symbol of burnt out 
life and hope — they move across my vision, and are 
lost in the darkness. 

" We must cease to cherish such as these or we 
shall have a race of weaklings and degenerates," we 
are warned. 

Yet the divine plan, as given to us, is that the 
poor shall be delivered. And He who healed the 
sick, gave sight to the blind, cleansed the lepers, and 
even raised the dead, gave the poor into our care 
with the assurance, " Greater things than these shall 
ye do." 

Greater than these! 

Shall they he in the way of prevention? 



CHAPTER VII 

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 

COUEAGE 

The world is for the brave at heart. 

And Time waits on their will. 
The days draw nigh thy high desire. 

Be thou but patient still. 

And every tide shall bear thee on, 

And every wind shall fill 
Thy sail, to help thee to thy goal. 

Have thou but courage still. 

— A. F. B, 

" If it hadn't been for my light, Irish heart, I'd 
have been dead long ago," a woman of many sorrows 
once said to my mother. The same might have been 
said about my mother herself. It is well that she 
passed on to her children this happy Celtic strain, 
along with her feeling for the unfortunate, or the 
latter might have sunk us with the submerged. 

Year after year the demands upon me grew 
heavier, as church work, charity work and civic work 
made irresistible appeals. " It's a case of frenzied 
philanthropy ! " I told my sister, describing the 
whirlpool rapids into which I had been drawn. Fol- 
lowing the Nurse's Circle, the Friendly Visitors, the 

154 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 155 

Flower Mission and the Working Girls' Association, 
had come the Civic Improvement Association, the 
Monday Night Club, and, growing out of that, the 
Antl-Tuberculosis Society. 

Truly, I had come far along the White Road that 
led from the Big Gate! And yet I never got more 
than an hour's journey away from my home, for the 
road wound around and past It. I could stand on 
my threshold and look down the rocky ravines, upon 
those who were beaten and robbed and left to die. 
I looked out — the scene called me. I looked In — 
the warmth and brightness gave me courage to go. 

Whenever it was possible, I summoned the clubs 
and circles to our home, so that the family might 
have part In them. And so, though my work took 
me out Into every avenue of public activity, these all 
centred In my home. 

What an outlook I had now from my own threshold ! 
(What an outlook any woman has, in these days, who 
is willing to see! 3 And how, in perspective, things 
assumed their right proportions! A thousand little 
worries fell away from me. The great, simple, vital 
facts of life rose above the trifles. Things that would 
last and wear and help, things of first value, took first 
rank. Looking out over the social wreckage, I real- 
ised the sanctity of the home and the rights of child- 
hood more than ever before. 



156 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

It was not only by going among diflPerent classes 
of people that my view had been broadened. There 
had come much enlightenment from those men and 
women with whom I worked. From each one I 
learned some vital fact or some bit of valuable method. 
It all went into my equipment, which I was daily 
learning to value more highly. 

The same eager group formed the centre of all 
our circles, and if I were to tell the story of my own 
experiences, my story would tell theirs, too. In fact, 
it might pass for the story of any one of those hun- 
dreds of men and women all over our country who 
are trying to help lift the burdens of humanity. 

I have watched the development of many social 
workers, and it seems to me that they go through 
all the stages of an eruptive disease. First, the 
knowledge of evil gets into the system, like an infec- 
tion. Then there is the chill of horror, followed by 
the fever of indignation. One is deathly sick at 
heart, and, at a certain stage, breaks out into numer- 
ous activities. At last the light cases get well, and 
are thereafter immune. But the serious cases have 
a long fever, and never again have quite the same 
resisting power. 

There is a time when one feels overwhelmed by 
personal responsibility. At this time many overdo 
and break down. Further along, one is oppressed by 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 157 

the feeling that all he can do is only a drop in the 
bucket, and that " reform is a matter of a lifetime." 
At this stage many despair and give up. Those who 
can go steadily on with the work when they are sick 
of it, can keep up courage when enthusiasm bums 
low, and inspire others when they are worn out them- 
selves, — these are they whose work will count. 

When the pressure of the world's need begins to 
be heavy upon us, we are apt to feel aggrieved at 
the slow and perverse generation that refuses to care 
or to help. We are like Kipling's Horse that was 
bowed with the burden of cleaning up the muss of 
creation, and appealed to the Camel for help, with the 
plea: 

" The world is so new, and all. 

And there is so much to do, and all." 

To which the Camel, lazily stretched in the shade, 
replied, " Humph ! " 

The group of men and women who had tried again 
and again to plant a permanent civic improvement 
organisation in our city appealed once more to the 
public. But the public said " Humph ! " to our plans 
for a city beautiful. 

When we opened playgrounds and a swimming 
pool, the Camel was glad to send its children to 
splash and to play. That didn't satisfy us then, but 



158 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

now we can see that some of the little camels are 
growing up to help in civic improvement. 

We had planned such great things for the city, 
and we asked it to come to our meetings and listen 
to our lectures. 

The city! We might as well have expected the 
courthouse to get up off its foundations and amble 
down to hear us. But the papers took up our work, 
with that keen intuition by which the press divines 
those things that are for the public good, and they 
magnified our efforts an hundredfold. 

It was the Fourth of July when we opened the 
school playgrounds. Different members of our board 
of directors were assigned to do the opening, and one 
school ground was given to me, to open as I pleased. 
The twins helped me, beating the drum, carrying a 
flag, and helping form the children in procession. I 
wouldn't have had them miss it, for it was a chance 
to take part in civic work such as seldom offers. 
And unless the children see us doing things for our 
city and state, of what avail are our patriotic pre- 
cepts? And how can we expect them to be public- 
spirited and to do a citizen's part unless we show 
them how? 

The children of that neighbourhood were out in 
force, and we had some rousing games, a good play 
together, and then a very short and very plain talk 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 159 

about good citizenship. I was particular to have 
the accompaniment of the drum, with its stirring roll, 
to some of our patriotic songs. A brass band would 
have suited me better. 

If we could have had pink lemonade and ginger- 
bread, followed by sky rockets, I should have felt 
still better satisfied. Anything was not to be de- 
spised that would leave a pleasant memory of the 
occasion, for, by psychological laws, in after years 
any one of these factors should call up all the others, 
in turn, and end with a general patriotic thrill. 

The opening of the swimming pool was planned 
for similar results, and it was my joy to help arrange 
its spectacular effects. At the given signal a " wire- 
less " touch sent off a charge of dynamite, away down 
the river, with a most satisfying boom. Then, with 
hundreds of boys and girls looking on, and Mayor 
Nolan at the post of honour, impressive words were 
spoken, and red, white and blue flowers strewn upon 
the water of the great pool. Crash ! went the band, 
with the " Red, White and Blue," and a great chorus 
of little voices took up the song. It was a stirring 
scene. 

There was something more solemn in the ceremony 
with which we opened our anti-tuberculosis camp. 
Boehne Camp, we named it, for the generous donor. 
The nurses took part, in a symbolic " opening," as a 



160 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

poem was read. Then came '' the sprinkling of the 
lintels," in imitation of the ancient Hebrew ceremony, 
with an invocation that the Angel of Death might 
pass over the place. This was done by Rabbi Mer- 
rit, one of the earnest promoters, and we brought 
a crystal chalice of sparkling water from the pure 
spring at the camp, into which he dipped a bunch 
of herbs for the sprinkling. Then the Episcopal 
minister, Dr. Cross, who had helped from the begin- 
ning, read a ritual service, and laid a blessing upon 
the place, and the camp was given to all sects and all 
people. 

Any civic worker will realise that these ceremonies 
crowned the hard work of a number of years. Dur- 
ing these years Miss Rein had gone to another field. 
Marcus C. Fagg (now in charge of child-saving in 
Florida) had taken her place. One of the first fruits 
of his energetic regime was a Monday Night Club, 
made up of about twenty-five representative men and 
women, from different civic and philanthropic circles 
in the city, and including some of our city ofiicials. 
For quite a while this met at our home. 

Here was a new school for me, and I mention it 
because of the help its training gave me for broader 
work. It was the best possible experience to be 
chairman of the lecture course committee, having, at 
times, to fill every post from advance agent to prop- 





No. 1, front of tenement row; dark^ damp and unsanitary- 
No. 2, rear of same. No playground but street, alleys, 
ashbins and sheds 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 161 

erty man. It generally fell to my lot to make the 
business arrangements with the speakers, attend to 
the church announcements, furnish newspaper arti- 
cles, distribute circulars, place the posters, and se- 
cure halls and janitors. Sometimes meeting a train, 
often entertainment of the speaker, and on occasions 
his introduction, devolved upon me. 

What sympathy it gives me now for those who 
must arrange with, meet, and find audiences for me! 
With what alacrity I say, " Oh, don't worry about 
how large an audience you'll have. It's hard to in- 
terest people in these subjects." 

The opportunity this position gave me to know the 
fine men and women we brought to lecture was well 
worth the work. Among them were some of the 
leaders of our state charities' conference into which 
I had been drawn for several years, that yearly school 
of philanthropy whose inspiration I acknowledge with 
gratitude. 

There was Ernest P. Bicknell, who has since been 
called to larger and larger service, and whose great 
heart is now bearing the brunt of world disaster. 

There was Amos W. Butler, father of that re- 
markable system of laws for the defective, delinquent 
and dependent, to which the nation points. 

Dr. J. N. Hurty, far-famed, with his sharp, fear- 
less lance, always on the frontier line of reform. 



162 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

There was Alexander Johnson, that walking school 
of philanthropy, beloved in many states, who in one 
lecture took us to the mountain top of his vision, and 
set us down five years ahead of where we were before. 

There were these, and other men of whom the state 
is proud. We had men and women, too, from other 
states to lecture to us. But better than the lecture 
was the quiet talk with them, afterward, about all 
those things I was burning to know. 

We had a housing committee in our Monday Night 
Club, for the homes of the poor had been on my mind 
since I first saw them, and year by year had grown 
the conviction that public interest must be aroused 
and, somehow, better conditions secured. Mr. Fagg 
was quite as positive as Miss Rein had been that the 
condition of our poor could never be permanently 
improved until their surroundings were bettered. 
Every efi^ort I made to help them convinced me of 
this. Some years afterward I was called to a town 
to help start a housing movement, and was told that 
both the charities secretary and the district nurse 
were threatening to give up and leave unless the 
housing conditions of the poor could be improved, 
feeling that their work was hopeless and their 
strength wasted, without that. 

And we were finding out then that our eager efforts 
to alleviate the wretchedness of the poor ended in — 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 163 

alleviation. The stream of misery flowed on, un- 
checked, and seemed to be growing larger. We had 
been doing almost nothing to prevent the evils whose 
ravages cost so much to repair. From every quarter 
there was borne in upon me the definite conviction 
that I could do more for child welfare and for civic 
welfare, more to fight tuberculosis and typhoid, more 
to prevent vice and to promote social purity, by bet- 
tering the homes of our city than by all the varied 
lines of effort that had engrossed me. I began to 
notice how the threads of the social problems, the 
civic problems and even the business problems of a 
city are all tangled up with the housing problem, and 
to realise that howsing reform is 'fundamental. 

From that time on I began to concentrate my ener- 
gies upon this one thing, which has become my life 
work. 

The idea was forming in my mind that nothing but 
a housing law would ever enable us to get relief from 
the conditions that caused our poor so much misery. 
But I had not thought far enough to see by what 
process or by what people it would be obtained. It 
certainly did not occur to me that I should have a 
hand in it. " The people that 'tends to things " 
would do it, some time, I supposed. 

One morning, picking up the Courier^ I saw that a 
building ordinance was about to be presented to the 



164 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

council. It occurred to me that this was the time 
and the opportunity to get some tenement regula- 
tions, by having them included in this ordinance, A 
sudden impulse came to me to go myself at once to 
Mayor Boehne and ask his help in getting the neces- 
sary provisions into the ordinance. 

If ever there was a good mayor, it was John T. 
Boehne. A man of broad policies and strong integ- 
rity, who had made a record by his determined law 
enforcement, it required no courage to approach him. 
Within an hour I was sitting in his office telling him 
the story of our poor and their great need of pro^ 
tection by law. 

" Can't we have a few sections in that ordinance 
that will regulate tenements ? " I asked, in conclusion. 

" Yes," he said kindly. " You go home and pre- 
pare the proper sections, modelled after those of 
other cities, and I will see that they are introduced 
a« a part of the ordinance." 

Home I hurried, with a singing heart. Off flew 
a letter to New York, one to Chicago, and others to 
smaller places. Back came bulky packages that I 
opened with eagerness, and sat down in the midst of 
my housework to examine. 
. How big those tenement laws were — a whole book ! 

I turned the pages curiously, and read at random : 

" In all non-fireproof tenement houses hereafter 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 165 

erected, fore and aft stud partitions which rest di- 
rectly over each other shall run through the wooden 
floor beams, etc." 

" Well, of all things," I exclaimed in dismay, and 
called the family to hear more : 

" No tenement house hereafter erected shall oc- 
cupy more than ninety per centum of a comer lot, 
etc." 

It was a distinct disappointment to me. Was that 
the kind of thing that tenement laws required? I 
wanted to give the poor some comforts, some conven- 
iences. I glanced through the book, and didn't see 
a word about anything that would make the wretched 
old houses look any better or more homelike. True, 
there was something about " repairs," but there was 
nothing about paint or paper, and shacks could be 
patched up and yet be just as forbidding and deso- 
late as before. 

But a careful reading of the parts applying to 
old houses was more encouraging. After all, I found 
that tenement laws require light and air, fire protec- 
tion, water, drainage, sewerage, repairs, prevention 
of dampness, prevention of overcrowding and all those 
unsanitary conditions that caused us so much trouble 
in our tenements. 

My spirits rose as I read, for I could see the dark 
rooms and the sour yards, the old vaults and cisterns 



166 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

disappearing, and with them, tuberculosis and ty- 
phoid. If that law had been prepared by some one 
who lived in our city it could not have hit our slums 
more squarely. 

Now, as to the new buildings — what pages and 
pages about space, " percentage of lots,'* " courts,'' 
and " air-shafts ! " We never heard of these latter 
things in Indiana, where we had " yards " all around 
our houses. 

Just about as odd and uncalled for, I doubt not, 
does such a law look to a member of the legislature 
when he sees it for the first time, if he reads it only 
once, or half skims it over. 

It was well that in the same hour that I realised 
the things a law could not do in regulating the con- 
ditions of the poor, I reahsed that those things a 
law could do were the most vital of all. I could see, 
now, that the things I had been aching for, many of 
them, were the things that city planners give, and 
the " garden city " people. I should have been one 
of these. 

But the more I studied, the more plainly I could 
see that the law was just what Evansville needed, to 
cure our old slums, and to prevent new ones from 
forming. City planning would have saved some of 
our troubles, and much ugliness, and, even now, could 
save the new parts of our city. But it would not 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 167 

cut windows in dark rooms, or drain wet cellars, or 
make landlords connect water mains with old houses. 

" You cannot easily engraft beauty upon rotten- 
ness,'' and housing reform was needed to cut out all 
the rottenness, before a City Beautiful could be 
achieved. And, after all, I could see that it was 
fundamental to all the better and higher things, not 
only health but comfort, nay, even decency. Light 
and air and water — that meant cleanliness 
and health, and the graces later, with grass and 
flowers. Safety, privacy, the isolation of families, — 
that meant safeguarding the home and the children. 

Then, it was to be done. The task lay before me 
of extracting, out of the material sent me, the regu- 
lations that should fit Evansville. 

" Not too long," and " make it simple," our hous- 
ing committee said. But, a simple housing law! 

Those who have helped prepare housing codes for 
our different States will have a vision of what it 
meant to prepare a limited number of sections for a 
city of 70,000. Of course, one soon finds out that, 
in such laws, every other consideration pales and 
dwindles beside that of space requirements. One 
finds, too, that these laws are prepared as accurately 
and carefully as a doctor's prescription, so that the 
change of one dimension in a " court " alters every- 
thing else. 



168 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 



1 



Yet there had to be many changes. I sat, for 
hours, with a puckered brow and fixed eye, pencil and 
paper in hand, trying to see all the things that would 
happen to a room, a yard, a hall, a " court," by 
given variations on the prescribed dimensions. All 
the time my reverence grew for the man, whoever he 
might be, who had been able to write the first tene- 
ment law, and to know what and how much of every- 
thing ought to be required. 

After I had done my best, in cutting, trimming, 
and adding, I called in our housing committee, and 
they puckered their brows over the same sections, 
and over other questions that had bothered me: 

" Would this law give the poor the relief we 
sought ? " 

"Was it fair to the property owner?" 

" Were we making stringent enough regulations ? " 

" If we made them more stringent, could we pass 
the ordinance? " 

" If we passed it, would it stand? " 

Finally it was completed. J. E. Igleheart, one of 
our committee, gave it the proper legal form, and I 
took it to the mayor. 

It was a comprehensive little bill, though more 
than the " few sections " I was to prepare, and less 
than the larger cities had. It went into the build- 
ing ordinance, which waa already a document of enor- 







T3 ' 



^ 



T3 
03 






LAYING FOUNDATIONS 169 

mous bulk. In due time, the council took up the 
matter, and as promptly put the whole thing back 
into a safe pigeon-hole, where it lay, gathering dust 
and anathemas, for many months. Later, the men 
of our committee took a copy of our tenement regu- 
lations to the council meeting, one night, and quietly 
put it through, as a separate ordinance. But that 
was long afterward, when we had almost given up 
hope of its ever going through, and had taken up a 
campaign for a state tenement law. 

While the bulky roll of the ordinance was repos- 
ing in the pigeon-hole, the State Conference of Chari- 
ties met at Evansville, I had chosen, " The Homes 
of the Poor," for the paper I was asked to prepare, 
and told all I knew about our slums. That evening 
we gave a reception in our home to the out-of-town 
guests, and I met many who afterwards helped me, 
some of them prominent politicians. During the 
days of the conference I took every opportunity to 
discuss the need of a state housing law with leading 
members of the conference. Every one of the chari- 
ties secretaries believed in its necessity and told me 
of conditions in their cities, like those in Evansville. 
Some of the others thought the time was not yet 
ripe. Miss Rein, and C. S. Grout, of Indianapolis, 
two of the most experienced secretaries in the state, 
strongly insisted upon the necessity of a state law. 



no BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

I felt that if we cauld prove the need for such a 
law, the leaders of the conference would take it up 
and put it through. I appealed to some of them and 
was much disappointed that they did not promise at 
once to do it, but parried my requests with an in- 
dulgent smile. One session of the legislature taught 
me why they smiled. But, surely, if we could furnish 
proof that the other cities of our state had slums, 
and could show their devastating effects, some organi- 
sation, civic or philanthropic, would attend to pro- 
curing the law. I determined to get all the neces- 
sary information, and the advice of housing experts, 
then to compile different housing laws, and find some 
organisation that would secure the passage of a state 
law. Somehow, I never doubted that it could and 
would be done. 

The National Charities' Conference met that year 
at Richmond, Va. It seemed providential to me that, 
as the programme showed, they were to have a round 
table on housing. I attended solely for that meet- 
ing, and to talk with the housing experts who would 
be there. 

I can never forget the feeling of infinitesimal small- 
ness that overwhelmed me when I asked my first timid 
question, at that round table. Dr. Walter Lindley, 
who presided, lifted my question, with great kind- 
ness, out of the vast silence. Then E. T. Hartman, 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 171 

of the Massachusetts Civic League, answered it in an 
illuminating speech. Later he gave me an hour of 
patient answers to eager questions, which I set down 
in a note book. 

How little I knew, and how much I had to ask! 
I went away with a new light on legislative methods, 
and with a list of books and pamphlets on housing to 
read, also much other information that made me feel 
rich indeed. 

At this conference I again met Mr. Grout, and he 
advised me of the investigation his organisation was 
making into the housing conditions of Indianapolis. 

" The Commercial Club are taking part in the in- 
vestigation, and are looking about for a suitable 
housing ordinance," he said. " I advise you to get 
in touch with them and interest them in the move- 
ment for B, state law." 

Home once more, I rushed off letters hither and 
yon, for laws and books and pamphlets. 

First, I wrote to Jacob Riis. Then and later he 
sent me letters of such cheer and encouragement that 
I have kept them to inspire future generations. Our 
family has always understood that if the house should 
take fire they must save the twins first, and then those 
letters. 

Mr. Riis gave me some sound advice, and then re- 
ferred me to Lawrence Veiller, as " the one who knew 



172 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

all about housing laws." It was long afterward that 
I learned that Mr. Veiller was the author of the New 
York tenement law of 1901 and knew of his 
yearly battle at Albany, where he has fought through 
legislature after legislature the steps that were 
necessary to perfect the New York law. Some day 
our country will appreciate that this long war has 
been for the homes of the nation, as was the Battle 
with the Slum, iFought so nobly by Mr. Riis. 

The National Housing Association was not yet 
formed, but Lawrence Veiller answered most gener- 
ously my appeals for information. Absorbing as 
much as I was able — for housing intelligence comes 
gradually — and following along as well as I could, 
at long distance, I set about the drafting of a state 
tenement law, which should be " not too long," and 
yet contain all the vital elements of the other laws 
in our country. 

If only Mr. Veiller's model housing law, or even 
his model tenement law had been written then, what 
work and worry it would have saved ! 

Finally, with some changes, I settled on the parts 
we had taken for our Evansville ordinance, Mr. Igle- 
heart went over it, and saw it was " air tight and 
water tight," and the draft was ready to submit to 
all the tests that practical business men would apply 
to it. It got them ! 



J.AYING FOUNDATIONS 173 

One other detail, not to be neglected, was the 
examining of the Indiana statutes, to see that we had 
not already some law on the subject. 

I determined to satisfy myself on this subject, so 
as to be sure th^t no obscure enactment would be 
overlooked. So, repairing to the law library at the 
courthouse, I scrutinised every page of index and 
hunted down, with finger on line, every word that 
might conceal a multiple dwelling in its content, and 
assured myself that Indiana would have nothing to 
say if her tenements were built fifty stories high, 
without a single window in one of them. 

It came to me with something of a shock that the 
poor in our state had no legal right to light and air; 
in fact, no tenant had, only those persons who owned 
enough ground to insure light and air to their dwell- 
ings. 

The next step was to get sufficient proof of the 
need for the law, in a form that we could present. 

With no organisation, and no funds, a scientific 
survey of the towns and cities of the state was, of 
course, out of the question. But I knew Evansville 
by heart. Indianapolis was making its own survey, 
and we must simply get the best information we could 
in regard to the other cities. The best I could do 
was to send a questionnaire to all the charities secre- 
taries in the state, asking certain facts about the 



174 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

housing conditions in their towns, for minute de- 
scriptions of a number of their tenements, and photo- 
graphs of their slum quarters. The charities secre- 
taries entered heartily into the campaign. They 
appreciated, more than any one else, what bad hous- 
ing meant to the poor, and gave then, as they are 
still giving, the best support that housing reform has. 

Their reports showed that all the larger cities, 
most of the towns, and many of the villages contained 
slums. There were whole slum villages, where miners 
lived, or quarrymen, in " company houses.'' There 
were little settlements and suburbs of shanties and 
shacks, where the poorest lived. The worst one was 
a shack settlement for rag pickers, built on the 
dumps, where the people ate garbage, and degrada- 
tion was extreme. 

In certain parts of the state the immigrant prob- 
lem made desperate complications. Mill workers, 
coming in hordes, lived in herds. Day shifts and 
night shifts used the same beds. " Hunyaks " were 
crowded together, twelve to twenty in two rooms, 
kennelled like beasts, in dark, filthy rooms, stifling 
with foul air, without water or any of the decencies, 
— and paying three prices for sub-let rooms, that 
was the worst shame of it. 

Some towns had a startling number of dark rooms. 
The Indianapolis survey showed 1,100 within a radius 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 175 

of a mile. But little towns that were building hand- 
some flats and were even called " model cities," had 
dark rooms in these flats. 

With few exceptions, the towns of the state gave 
their poor no water, drainage or sewer connections. 
All housed the poor in their worst old shacks, hovels, 
tenements, warehouses, stables or sheds. There was 
the same tale of unsanitary conditions everywhere, 
wet, mouldy cellars, damp floors and the rest. 

But why should I go into more detail ? These con- 
ditions are the common scandal of all our states, and 
if any one who reads this chapter will start in a 
straight line from his city building, in any direction, 
go a few blocks, and turn up the first stairway lead- 
ing from the street, in any solid row of buildings, he 
Is pretty apt to find some surprises in the way of 
living conditions. Or, let him go down some of the 
alleys in the business blocks, and further out, about 
the ragged edges of the town. Our photographs 
could be passed around in any company, in any city, 
and very few who would see them could say that they 
were not taken from some of their own back streets. 

We had plenty of proof that the time was " ripe 
for a tenement law," but we had to have something 
to show to the legislature in proof of Evansville's 
condition. Nothing is so conclusive as photographs, 
and I ransacked the city to find the worst houses. 



176 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Dr. M. A. Farr, our Methodist minister, a mem- 
ber of our housing committee and one of the friendly 
visitors, was an expert photographer, and he, too, 
knew these places by heart. He got some " speak- 
ing likenesses " — strong language they would have 
spoken, if they could. Then I took my whole col- 
lection, from all the cities, mounted them on large 
cards, and put sketches and suggestive titles, in ink, 
on the margin. Over one old death trap I put a 
great skeleton, with arm outstretched above it, and 
the words " Death keeps watch over this house.'' 
Five black coffin shapes were drawn in a row beneath 
a house that had a record of five deaths from tubercu- 
losis in a short time. I drew a black devil peeping 
out from a saloon that had families living over it. 
It made a very striking set of posters. 

No reports were available from the little towns, 
and one August morning I started off on a traction 
line, going to the end and stopping off at every place 
on the way back. 

It was an odd experience. Some towns had only 
one street, along the railroad, but there was hardly 
one in which patient search would not find one or more 
typical slum dwellings, at the end of the row of 
houses, or hidden back in the brush. Sometimes it 
was a cluster of hovels, sometimes a tenement, off by 
itself, " a ragged beggar, sunning," swarming with 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 1T7 

people, and with conditions that would make a New 
York tenement blush. 

These various lines of work had occupied most of 
the summer. At the same time I read everything I 
could get on housing. Then I went back to Jacob 
Riis' books, to get the spirit of his prophecy. 
" Fifty years ago, the slums of New York resembled 
those of our larger western cities to-day," he tells 
us, with the warning, " Head off the slums ! " 

There came to me a vision of my State, as though 
it were spread out before me, with its rapidly grow- 
ing cities and pretty little towns. In fifty years 
those black slum spots we had found would have 
spread beyond all control. The land would grow in 
value, speculators would be crowding houses in on 
side and back yards, spoiling the beauty of the 
streets, and shutting out the sunlight and air for all 
time. Once built up, space is rarely retrieved. 

And in the larger cities — my heart sank at the 
thought! In fifty years we would have horrors of 
congestion, of decay. The cancer spots of slums 
would have eaten out the hearts of our cities, and 
their poison would have run through all their arteries. 

It is only six years since then, but in that brief 
time I have seen some of the things I feared come to 
pass in our unregulated towns. In the two for which 
we obtained our first tenement law, the enormous 



178 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

increase in tenement building, and our experience 
with a few land owners, shows what would have hap- 
pened if no limit had been set to crowding. 

With every book I read, with every report and 
photograph that came in from our towns, the vision 
became more vivid. It lay spread out before me — 
my State, dotted with growing towns, set in such a 
vastness of field and forest that crowding seemed 
criminal ! 

At night I lay sleepless, the darkness thronged 
with faces I had seen in our tenements, multiplied, 
repeated, " even as a broken mirror " multiplies. 
There were burning eyes of the consumptives, hope- 
less faces of the mothers, and white, moaning babies. 
And these were no images of fancy! I had known 
them by name, here in our own city. And all the 
other cities and towns had their poor! What would 
they have in fifty years? 

What was the immolation of one life, to all that 
misery? One could have dashed it down cheerfully 
to save all that, as men do, fighting for their country. 

There sounded a bugle call, to take up arms for 
my State, and every power of my being leaped to the 
summons. The call of one's country, the call of 
humanity — they are both the call of God. Hence- 
forth, wherever that voice led, I would go. 

There need be no frenzy, no cant, about a special 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 179 

The air is ringing with calls. If only 
a few hear, the few must answer. 

" Do you think that no one else could have done 
that work but you? '^ remonstrated a friend. " Some 
one else would have done it if you had waited." 

" Some one might have done it, but no one had, 
and no one was offering to do it, and I couldn't wait," 
I answered. Sometimes I marvel at the way it all 
came about, that steadily and without one moment of 
hesitation, every step was taken that was neces- 
sary to prepare the way for a tenement law. The 
strangest thing about it was that the way seemed 
mapped out and decisions made for me, and that, 
almost without volition, I seemed to be not led, but 
moved, by a great Hand. Under a fearful tension 
of work and responsibility, night and day, for 
months, I have never known a time when thought was 
so clear and so unflagging. 

Even the decision to do all that was necessary to 
secure a state law seemed less a decision than a 
growing knowledge that I was to do it. I did not 
know what this would involve, but I knew it meant 
the encountering of great obstacles, a stupendous 
amount of work, and active opposition. But it never 
once entered my mind that I should have to go to the 
legislature. My part, I supposed, was to lay the 
foundation and prepare the way. 



180 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Realising that housing reform was a new thought 
in our state, and that the responsibility of the land- 
lord was an unpopular as well as an unfamiliar doc- 
trine ; realising, too, from my years of charity work, 
Jiow few people knew the actual misery of the poor, I 
set about a campaign of education. My one over- 
powering desir'e was that every one in the state should 
know, feel and care, should see the wrongs and under- 
stand the remedy. " Publicity " was now my one 
care. What can we accomplish without it in such 
work? 

The press of the state responded nobly, and with 
that prophetic ken I have remarked before. Others 
sometimes miss the spirit of housing reform, but I 
have never seen an editorial in our state that failed 
to rise to it. The presidential campaign of 1908 
was on, and the papers were congested with politics, 
but all the grist I could grind out was given space 
and good, strong comment. 

The endless part of my task was the personal let- 
ters that simply had to be written. Of course, noth- 
ing could take their place. I wrote hundreds, and 
if I had known more people to write to, I should have 
written more. Business men^s clubs — first of all the 
Commercial Club of Indianapolis, women's clubs, civic 
organisations, all had to have careful letters. Prom- 
inent men and women had to have individual appeals, 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 181 

suited to each. It was an endless task, for circular 
letters would not avail. How I thanked my uncle for 
his training, and how I appreciated my typewriter, 
that gave my epistles more hope of missing the waste- 
basket ! 

Click, click, click, click, click, went the typewriter, 
from June till January, all day from morning till 
twilight, with stops only for household cares or for 
the children. They played about me or sat as close 
as possible while I wrote, with little arms about my 
waist, and I could work better with them near. 
Stopping now and then to tie a shoe, find a string, 
or get a lunch, gave breathing places, and rest for 
tired eyes. 

I am asked, "Why could not a secretary have 
saved some of that work?" In a city of our size? 
A mother and housekeeper doing so much public work 
that she had to employ a secretary! That would 
have been a scandal, indeed, almost as bad as to have 
an office! 

After my morning tasks were done, the meat and 
groceries ordered, the meals planned and the day ar- 
ranged, my grind of letters began, and went on till 
noon ; after lunch and a brief rest, writing again, till 
sunset ; after the children were in bed, more work on 
articles, sometimes till midnight. 

Sitting at my desk by the window I thought of the 



182 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

factory girls, and the children shut into close tene- 
ment rooms, while summer called and the trees beck- 
oned. Oh, for a day in the fields and woods! But 
if I stopped, even for a day, my work would lag. 
Answers to my letters, with many questions, were 
pouring in, and a mountain of correspondence was 
daily growing higher. And it was no worse for me 
than for those others, shut in from the sunshine. If 
this work could only win it for them ! 

Dog-days came, and the thermometer boiled up 
near the top, but the pile of letters grew steadily. 
With all our airy rooms, and spacious lawns, veran- 
das, baths, ice, electric fans, we were sweltering. 
What must it be in those stifling thermos jugs of 
rooms, with the foul odours intensified by the heat? 

The leaves on the bough by the window turned sere 
and dropped away. 

The birds deserted the bough, and finally snow 
came and covered it. 

But still I sat by the window and wrote. Each 
month the strain grew more intense, for the legis- 
lature was to meet in January. 

One by one I had given up all forms of recreation. 
Reading had been cut down to housing literature. 
Society was abandoned, and even my best friends 
complained of my neglect. Outings had long since 
been given up, and finally, all outdoor exercise, ex- 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 183 

cept a little walk just before dark. Just in time to 
see the sun go down on our beautiful river I would 
throw on my wraps, and hurry down to the avenue 
from which the pageant of the sunset could be wit- 
nessed. 

Travellers tell us that the sunsets on our river are 
unrivalled. Always different, they were always won- 
derful — the crescent of the city, the long loop of 
the river, with willows above and hills below, the 
Kentucky shore on the other side, a strip of wood- 
land and broad sandy beach. Shoals in the river, 
and a little breakwater, made lines of silver on the 
glowing mirror of its depths, or flashing ripples. 
And then, the colour! Sometimes a blue haze 
wrapped the farther shore, sometimes a silver veil 
trailed over it and it rose from the misty water, dim 
as a point of Dreamland. At such times the city, be- 
low the wharf, was a blur of soft colours, growing 
fainter toward the hills. 

When the red sunsets of winter came, the town 
turned aside to see them. It was life-giving to stand 
and drink in the pure air blown over miles of river 
and cornfields, and watch the delicate flush recede 
from the zenith, gathering slowly into an ever-deep- 
ening glow about the sinking sun. Then the river 
was tinged with '^ dragon's blood,'* the children said, 
watching with me until the glory died away from sk^ 



184 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

and water, changing from crimson to ashes of roses, 
darkening and dimming until the purple shadows 
folded In river and shore. Lights flashed out along 
the river from the boats and the town, but still we 
waited for the one star that came out and trembled 
over the water with a message of hope and courage, 
and beauty yet to be set above all the city's blackness. 

That one glowing hour was an antidote for the 
grey reeking sordldness I had been writing of all day. 

In October the State Charities' Conference met at 
South Bend. I was on the programme for a paper 
on " The Housing Problem of Indiana," so thither I 
took my draft of the tenement bill. 

Travelling almost the entire length of our state, 
I was impressed with the vastness of domain, with 
the contrast between the prodigality of our unculti- 
vated lands and the miserly pinching and squeezing 
of our city spaces. We rode for hours through 
woods and fields, and whizzed through towns that 
seemed only a smoky blur on the landscape. 

Space — space, that was the one great, vital need 
of our cities and towns, the need to save it before land 
became more valuable than people ! 

Riding past villages, through little towns, along 
miners' settlements, I had disheartening glimpses 
down Into the cindery strips of back yards along the 
tracks. There was time to note the blackened sheds, 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 185 

the dingy rows of houses, jostling each other almost 
on to the track ; time to note the dirty children, who 
climbed up the ash piles and heaps of rubbish to 
wave to us. 

As town after town was passed, a feeling of gloom 
settled over me, and the hopelessness of redeeming all 
these waste places seized upon me. But once in the 
conference, in the midst of good friends, the outlook 
brightened. There were plenty to offer encourage- 
ment and cheer. Francis H. McLean was there, and 
went over the bill with me, making some valuable sug- 
gestions. He took my paper, after it was delivered, 
and published it in Charities (now The Survey) just 
in time to help in our campaign. 

A committee was appointed to go over the bill, 
and then the conference voted its approval. 

There was a brilliant reception at the close, and 
new friends were made, who are now old and dear. 

" I have an invitation for you," said Mr. Grout, 
as the evening closed. " The educational committee 
of the Commercial Club invites you to meet them at 
luncheon, as you return home, to discuss your housing 
bill. Your friend. Miss Foster, is included in the 
invitation." 

Good news ! It sounded hopeful. 

The next day Miss Foster and I arrived in Indian- 
apolis, and appeared in due time at the Commercial 



186 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Club. We were taken to the directors' room, where 
luncheon was served, and there we found about a 
dozen all ready to greet us, others of the committee 
arriving later. There were lawyers, bankers, editors, 
doctors, all prominent men. 

So much depended on the outcome of that meeting, 
and I was so entirely in the dark as to how the com- 
mittee felt disposed toward the bill, that I was rigid 
with a tension that came near lock-jaw. I remem- 
bered, afterwards, the well-appointed table to which 
we sat down, and the fact that many tempting dishes 
were served, but I could not recall anything that came 
after the soup. 

My letter to the club, Mr. Grout had told me, had 
won by being practical and business-like. Fearful of 
spoiling that impression by some unguarded word, I 
held on to myself as one riding a broncho down a 
steep mountain path. I remember checking myself 
in a description of the conditions of the poor, for 
fear I should verge on sentiment. 

If anything makes it difficult to maintain a lofty 
dignity it is to sit in chairs built for great men, con- 
scious that you can't reach the floor. I've always no- 
ticed how much more easily impressive are large peo- 
ple, with the stately step of avoirdupois, the judicial 
aspect of massive cheek and chin, the big voice that 
goes with physical strength, the force of ponderosity ! 





> 







CD 



f 






C3 






LAYING FOUNDATIONS 187 

But so kind were my hosts that I forgot these 
things. 

The luncheon and our session lasted three hours. 
After the last course the bill was laid upon the table. 
I trembled to see sundry crosses and question marks 
on the margin. One by one, each doubtful point was 
discussed, and I was called upon to explain just why 
it should be so and not otherwise. It was like being 
on the witness stand, with a dozen cross-examiners — 
keen, though so kindly. Surely my good angel stood 
beside me and told me what to answer, for at the end 
I had the satisfaction of seeing every question mark 
erased. 

The committee expressed its satisfaction with the 
bill, but they asked if I would go over it, word for 
word, with a sub-committee, before they gave formal 
approval. Would I stay for such a meeting? 
Would I! 

That night Miss Foster and I sat down again at 
the long mahogany table with Professor Dunn, Dr. 
Hurty, secretary of our State Board of Health, Mr. 
Grout, and Mr. Linton A. Cox. Mr. Cox was a law- 
yer and real estate owner and one of the most active 
members of the club, also a hold-over member of our 
Senate. 

I realised that his interest in the bill was very 
important, but none of us dreamed how much it was 



188 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

to mean, in years to come, to the housing movement 
in Indiana. 

For three hours, again, we went over the bill, con- 
sidering every word, every comma. At the close of 
our conference I was told that the full approval of 
the committee would be given to the bill. 

" Then, gentlemen,'' I said, with unconcealed de- 
light, " if you approve of this bill, and it is what you 
have been looking for, let it be the Commercial Club 
bill, and let me leave it in your hands to be put 
through the legislature. You are here on the 
grounds, I am not. You know exactly how to do it 
— I have no idea of such things. Leave me entirely 
out of it. All I want is to have the bill passed." 

The committee conferred a moment. " The bill 
would not have the same chance of passing," they 
said, " if introduced as a Commercial Club bill, as if 
presented by some individual who is known to be 
working for the cause of humanity. We will do all 
we can to push it, and we will stand back of you and 
do whatever you want done, but you will have to be 
the leader. Besides, it is only fair that you should 
have the honour, when you have done all this work. 
You will have to come to the legislature." 

What fell? Something seemed to give way in the 
foundations, and the big Commercial Club building 
was going round and round! All such things as 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 189 

drowning men see swirled past me, I saw myself, 
with horror, a married woman with a " career." I 
saw my family, whom I had never left except for a 
few days, suffering for my care ; the twins going out 
in the rain without rubbers; my daughters needing 
me ; the cook forgetting to order breakfast-food ; my 
husband, with a southern man's ideas of such things, 
his indulgence already strained. I saw my friends, 
disgusted at such publicity. I saw enemies, frowns, 
— brickbats! . . . 

The walls were still going around. I looked up 
and saw all those expectant eyes upon me, and took 
a deep breath. 

" Oh, I couldn't,'' I said. " I never dreamed of 
coming myself. Why, I never even saw a legisla- 
ture, and I haven't an idea of what to do. Besides, 
it isn't a woman's work, and you are here right on 
the ground. And I don't want any honour, if only 
the bill is passed." " We'll stand back of you, we'll 
plan everything and make all the arrangements. But 
it is absolutely necessary that some one must be here 
who has studied housing laws and housing conditions, 
and you will have to be present at the committee 
hearing," they said. 

" Let me think a minute," I pleaded. 

And now the babies of the tenements went past 
me, with their little grey pinched faces and out- 



190 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

stretched hands. I thought of the absurdity of going 
thus far and then dropping everything, when these 
men were ready to take up the work. And the words 
came to me : " He that putteth his hand to the 
plough and tumeth back — " 

I would never turn back ! 

With the desperate deliberation of a suicide who 
jumps into the icy water, I took the leap. 

" Very well, gentlemen," I said calmly, " if you 
say it is necessary for me to come, I'll come." 

There were some final details of arrangement, and 
I took my departure. " When the bill has been in- 
troduced, and a committee hearing is set, we will 
send for you," they said. 

I went out carrying a heavy burden. For a mo- 
ment I had laid off my armour and dropped my load. 
I had hardly realised its weight until I was eased of 
it, and, as I buckled it on again, it seemed more than 
I could bear. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 

The Family sat and listened to my story of the 
Charities' Conference and the Commercial Club lunch- 
eon. They heard the climax without flinching: I 
was to go to the Legislature. 

"But how can I manage about leaving you?" I 
asked, looking from one to the other. 

" Go ! '' said the Family. " We'll manage all 
right." 

" I will keep house and see to the children," said 
my womanly eldest daughter, Margaret, who was just 
out of school. 

" I will come right up and stay," said my mother, 
who had dropped in for a little visit. 

Then there was nothing to worry about. 

My mother took the most intense interest in my 
housing work. How glad she was to contribute to it 
in this way. 

Listening for the knell of the telephone, to sum- 
mon me to the committee hearing at Indianapolis, I 
set about my preparations for absence, I knew not 
how prolonged. Photographs, reports and clothes 

were packed and ready. Then there were the family 

191 



19a BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

supplies and wardrobe to look after, to see that noth- 
ing lacked. The last thing was to tack a type-written 
card on the wall of the nursery, lest some of my many 
directions should be forgotten: 



" The children's heavy 


underwear 


is on the second shelf in 


the linen 


room. 




" Be sure to keep them home from 


school if it storms. 




" In case of sore throat, 
etc.'' 


nco .— — — i... 





At last the dread summons came. I tore myself 
away from the Family. My husband put me on the 
train, with many last services and injunctions, and 
set the bag that held the precious bill on the seat 
beside me. All the way up to Indianapolis I 
thought of how Daniel felt on his way to the lions' 
den. It was not facing the committee that I dreaded, 
but the public ordeal, and the fear of doing the 
wrong thing, that would wreck the whole business. 
Every time I thought of that it gave me that " gone " 
faint feeling, which seems like heart failure, but is 
really, I've been told, only a trick of the pneumo- 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 193 

gastric nerve. It was the same sensation that the 
Big Dog always gave me in childhood. 

As the train whirled me nearer to the legislature, 
the step I was taking seemed more serious, though 
I had realised from the beginning what it would in- 
volve. There was no glamour of misconception over 
it. I knew there would be opposition, a " fight to 
the finish." And this fight would be to win — not 
all those things I wanted for the poor, not comforts, 
not conveniences, only bare decencies; not those 
things that would make life worth living, but only 
a few of those things that would make it less terrible. 
It would be taking only the first step on a long, weary 
road. It would be laying only the foundation for the 
tall, shining castle of my dreams, that fortress of 
ihe people's rights, that would hardly be finished, 
with dome and spire, in my life-time, perhaps not in 
another generation. 

All we could expect to win was a tenement law; 
not a law regulating all houses, though I felt keenly 
how much that was needed, as so many of our poor 
lived in shacks and hovels. But no other state had 
yet gone so far, and we could not expect to take such 
a stride, on our first attempt. 

I felt how remote was the ultimate ideal of housing 
reform, which would regulate all buildings^ insuring 



194 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

them to be safe and sanitary, and not a menace in 
any way to public health and morals. Yet, suppos- 
ing even that we could attain that ideal, at one 
bound, in a perfect law, and that it would be per- 
fectly enforced, there were still all those essentials of 
environment, for the betterment of the poor, that the 
law could not give them, that only philanthropy or 
an awakened civic spirit could provide. Not only 
matters of convenience and comfort (at least the lack 
of discomfort), but of beauty and outlook, that mean 
so much to the moral development of a people, would 
still be lacking. But — the law had to come first ; to 
come, and then to be enforced, as I am often re- 
minded. 

I cherished no fond delusion that the moment the 
Governor would sign the bill (if it passed) it would 
automatically take effect; that crystal water would 
burst at once from thousands of faucets, in all our 
cities; that sunlight would break into dark rooms, 
that slimy yards would grow a firm, velvety sod, and 
Death and Destruction would slink away, leaving 
rosy children playing among the flowers, around all 
of our tenements. No indeed! But even though 
only the first step were to be taken, it was so vital, so 
necessary, that it was worth one whole life-time of 
toil and struggle just to take that first, biggest, hard- 
est step. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 195 

Although I had friends In Indianapolis, I thought 
best not to let them know that I was coming, surmis- 
ing that my business would be all-engrossing. So I 
went at once, on arrival, to the Claypool, that being 
near the state house. 

It had been arranged that Senator Ezra Mattingly 
and Representative Homer McGinnis should intro- 
duce the bill simultaneously in their respective houses, 
and this had been done. These two gentlemen, with 
Senator Linton A. Cox, Dr. J. N. Hurty, Mr. C. S. 
Grout, and others interested in the bill, came over to 
the hotel after dinner, that we might have a brief 
consultation before the committee hearing. 

The state house loomed big and grey against the 
night. The lights at the gloomy entrance seemed 
to intensify the darkness. Inside, the great empty 
corridors, dimly lighted, seemed like caverns of 
night, and echoed dismally to our steps. 

We emerged like bats into a brilliantly lighted 
committee room, that was quite well filled. I was 
grateful to find a number of ladies present. After- 
wards I found that Senator Cox's wife was one of 
them, and Dr. J. D. Poor's wife was another. From 
that moment until this those two splendid women have 
stood by me. 

Dr. Foor was the chairman of the Health Com- 
mittee in the House. He was there, with his commit- 



196 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

tee, and so was the Senate committee on Health, for 
this was to be a joint hearing. The members of both 
were gathered informally about, but I could not 
tell them from citizens of Indianapolis, a number 
of whom were present, among them members of the 
Commercial Club whom I had met. 

Every one was grave, as if awaiting a public exe- 
cution. The opening speech, by one of our men, 
sounded to me like the hammering of the carpenter 
who was preparing the scaffold. 

Now I was called. The side of the great table 
which I had to pass seemed miles long, and the si- 
lence was so deep that the dropping of a whole paper 
of pins would not have touched bottom. 

To address a legislative committee, I found, was 
very different from speaking before a missionary 
society, a charity organisation, or a civic club, who 
are eager to listen and anxious to be convinced. 
Many of these men were fagged, their minds over- 
crowded with details of numerous bills. Some were 
haggard and sleepy from a late caucus of the night 
before. 

I had thought to speak with some of the fire that 
burned within me, but my sentences seemed to me 
as if just taken out of an ice box. My well con- 
sidered reason and rhetoric sounded, I felt, as mean- 
ingless as the rattling of a fusillade of dried peas. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 197 

The silence grew oppressive. The tired men shifted 
in their hard chairs. Two, under the brilliant light, 
closed their eyes. One man came in at the door, two 
went out, with a slight confusion in the room. Were 
they bored? The idea was insupportable, so I fired 
a few more dried peas and sat down, without being 
half through. A few others gave short, vigorous 
talks, and the hearing was at an end. Every one 
woke up, and, to my surprise, the meeting ended in 
enthusiasm, and we were given the assurance that 
both committees would report favourably on the bill. 

" You have won the first round," one of the men 
said, with congratulations. 

Oh, the relief of common talk, after that strain! 
How good every friendly face looked, and they all 
seemed to be friends. 

Between us we had presented the case so clearly 
as to give the committee the whole situation, and noth- 
ing more was needed. Almost all of them were doc- 
tors, who had been fighting the very conditions that 
the bill was planned to remedy. From that time on 
they were the most enthusiastic supporters of the 
bill, and my kindest friends. 

The next day the Health Committee of the House 
asked me to attend a separate hearing, to make cer- 
tain points plain. Dr. Hurty was there, and Mrs. 
Foor sat by me. But with what good cheer and 



198 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

high spirits I went. Daniel was at the king's table, 
now! 

There were matters of policy to decide which made 
it necessary for me to remain at the capitol. It 
was important, too, for me to meet as many of the 
members as possible, I was told. 

My first glimpse of a legislature gave me the im- 
pression that Professor William James says the 
world gives to a baby* It seemed a " blooming, 
buzzing confusion/' What were those men all shout- 
ing about? And who were all these people who were 
trying to get in and out? But presently the seeth- 
ing subsided, and I caught a clue, and listened with 
interest. 

After the session my new friends gathered around 
me, and brought up files and battalions of members, 
for introduction. In a short time I had met almost 
every one, and found that, from the presiding officers 
down to the chubbiest cherub of a page, all were kind- 
ness and interest. Members assured me of a wel- 
come to the floor, and ofi^ered the use of their desks, 
at any time. Doorkeepers and sergeants were as 
hospitable as real hosts. The custodian of the state 
house saw, himself, to the stringing of my poster 
exhibit of city slums on wires along the corri- 
dor. 

The main business, now, was to make friends for 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 199 

our bill, and all that was necessary, I felt, was that 
every man in the legislature should know the facts 
about the homes of the poor, and the remedial powers 
of the bill. But here were two big rooms full — one 
hundred and fifty men! It would take a long time 
to tell them each the story, and go over that long 
bill. 

Our men — and their number was growing — de- 
cided that it would be a good stroke to have me 
speak to the whole legislature, if possible. The plan 
was arranged late one night, at the Claypool, when 
Senator and Mrs. Cox and some of the others were 
there to dinner. 

The next day the consent of both houses was se- 
cured, and the Senate adjourned to sit in the House 
and listen to my argument. At that time I was too 
anxiously engrossed in planning for our cause to 
think of what a great personal honour was given me, 
though only once before had such a privilege been 
granted any woman. All I thought of was the op- 
portunity to present the cause to so many at once, 
and the need of white hot, driving sentences. 

The House filled up with my audience, and I sat 
in the rear with my friends, waiting for a long-drawn- 
out debate to come to an end. Then the gavel 
sounded; a few men conferred, near the front, and I 
heard Speaker Honan say, " Will the good-looking 



200 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

member from Morgan please escort the lady to the 
desk? " 

That meant Mr. McGinnis and myself. Up the 
aisle we passed, and the Speaker gave me a cordial 
introduction. 

Standing a moment, to await silence, I looked up 
and down over the room. What a huge place ! Our 
state house must have been built for giants. How 
far it seemed across the Speaker's great desk ! How 
remote were the lofty galleries ! Oh, just for once, 
to be a man, with a big brass voice ! But my friends, 
standing back by the door, could hear me, and they 
nodded encouragement. On the front seats were some 
kind human eyes that never wavered. They cared 
about the poor, I could see. 

It was all over, in a little while. I knew now how 
Vesuvius felt after an eruption, only that Vesuvius 
would just as soon do it again. 

Things looked well for the bill now. Senator Cox 
said. The enthusiasm of our men was spreading to 
the others. It would be several days before it would 
have a second reading in either house, and in the 
meantime we would all be working. 

" I believe I'll just stay up here a few days and 
help push it through," I said innocently, and Senator 
Cox explained, with a twinkle in his eye, that it would 
take weeks, not days. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 201 

Now let me say that if I had not found out what 
vague ideas people in general have about legislative 
processes I might not be so willing to admit my own 
ignorance. But I have found that the majority of 
people are hazy on such matters. 

I was a truly humble pupil, and acted only as di- 
rected, learning to venture, little by little, but with 
extreme caution. It was a point of pride with me 
to avoid all the little things that cause the reproach- 
ful remark, " That's just like a woman," and to take 
all the fates of war, at least outwardly, in the calm 
impersonal way men do. To no one would I a^mit 
fear, or doubt of our ultimate victory, even in the 
darkest hours, for I realised the value of a confident 
bearing. Besides — could one engage to take a hand 
in this tremendous game and fail of being sportsman- 
like? It was my care to avoid sentimentality, and 
to stick to the practical issues, in a practical way, 
having ready all the business arguments in favour of 
the law. 

I wouldn't have let one of those men know that 
I had ever written a verse ! 

My entire days were spent at the state house, 
strengthening our fortifications in every way possible. 
When the members were free, I explained the points 
of the bill to them, if they wished, showed them my 
photos of the slums^ and told them plain facts about 



203 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the poor. When they were busy, I talked with their 
wives. They were as horrified as I wanted them to 
be over the conditions I described. Many of them 
came from little towns or rural districts. How I 
thanked my years in the country, for there was not 
an experience in these women's lives into which I 
could not enter. We were good friends at sight, and 
they were ready to help me, by explaining the situ- 
ation to their husbands, and even to the latter's seat 
mate or neighbour across the aisle. 

At all times I had to be ready to meet all ques- 
tions, not only of members but outsiders, and what 
questions, what arguments, of the latter, had to be 
answered! But no matter what ignorance, stupid- 
ity, avarice, or hard-hearted indifference confronted 
me, I was determined that nothing should tempt me 
into antagonism or belligerency, for what I could 
not win I did not want. 

The exhausting strain of these all-day sieges, amid 
bad air, and tobacco smoke, and the confusion of a 
crowded room, may be imagined. I was glad by 
evening to plod back to the hotel, and^ after a lonely 
dinner, to steal away to rest. The members and 
their wives who stopped at the Claypool invited me 
to join their card and theatre parties, but I could 
not spare the hours that would give me strength for 
the next day's ordeal. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 203 

Having been always accorded respectful attention 
at the state house, I took it for granted that every 
one understood my footing. But one day a senator 
surprised me by asking, " Who pays your expenses ? " 

" Why, my husband ! '' I answered, taken aback 
and indignant. 

"Well, but what organisation sent you here? 
Isn't some club paying your expenses ? " 

It was hard to make him understand that I was 
not a paid lobbyist, but, when convinced, nothing gave 
him a higher appreciation of my work. I saw then 
why a disinterested individual had an influence that 
a club could not wield. 

The fact became established that I had come to 
the legislature as the Ambassador of the Poor, and 
in no personal capacity, and I met people on this 
plane, even at first acquaintance. It began to have 
a strange reaction, this eliminating of personalities, 
and made me feel like a " Voice in the Wilderness." 
Even had I wished, I could not detach myself from 
my work for one moment, for the first sentence, after 
every introduction, was, " This is the lady who is 
interested, etc." I was content to have it so, and had 
neither breath nor strength for other conversation, 
after the day's work was over. 

. One evening, as I sat apart for a few moments on 
the balcony, where the guests gathered after dinner. 



204f BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

a member of the House, whom I had met most 
casually, a modest lawyer from a small town, came 
up and joined me. He began at once to make kindly 
inquiries about our bill, drawing out the story of its 
origin. He seemed much aroused by the stories I told 
him of the slums of our various cities. In return, 
he told of his own experiences with the poor of his 
town, and then took up some of the problems of 
poverty. Step by step, forgetting that I was a 
stranger, he went on to talk of the higher life, and 
finally, with glowing face and kindling eyes that 
seemed not to see me, but to be fixed upon the future, 
he poured out his aspirations for larger and better 
things. 

The next morning I met him in the state house, 
and he said, " Mrs. Bacon, I sat up till two o'clock 
last night, to work for your bill." 

This was only one of the many instances in which 
the high appeal met with a high response. Some- 
times a simple story, or a photograph, would bring a 
look of pity and a word of compassion, or a burst 
of sudden anger against those who wronged the 
helpless. Often, in a few quiet sentences, would come 
a glimpse of the inner life, the " better self," as if 
a shutter had suddenly opened and a light flashed out. 
These were the men whose enthusiasm kept our cause 
alive, the ones upon whom we could depend. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 205 

It is a wonderful thing to look back upon, that, in 
all my experience with that legislature, composed of 
men from every walk of life, farmers, mechanics, law- 
yers, teachers, ward politicians, men of varied cul- 
ture and limitations, there was never one occasion 
where I was not given to feel that womanhood was 
upon a pedestal. Sometimes I wonder if ever a 
woman had such royal treatment, in any assembly. 
It is no wonder that I came out of my legislative ex- 
periences with a greater faith and pride in the chivalry 
of our Indiana men, not only for their attitude 
towards me, but, in so many instances, towards the 
weak, the poor and the helpless. Even after oppo- 
sition developed to our bill, its enemies were no less 
courteous to me, personally. Indeed, they were as 
polite as French executioners. Some of them took 
pains to explain that they were friendly to me, even 
though they could not support my bill. It was " too 
ideal," they said! 

" I'm sorry to see you wearing yourself out. You 
are getting thin and pale," one of them said, kindly. 
'^ Why don't you go home and rest? " 

" I will if you will come over on our side, and see 
the bill through," I laughed. 

" I'll declare, if that frail little woman can come 
up here and fight for such a cause, it looks like we 
big strong men ought to help her," said one man, who 



£06 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

wavered unhappily between his pledges and his prin- 
ciples. 

I had to be fair to all of our opponents, and re- 
member that housing reform was a strange new 
thought to all of them, I preferred to believe, as 
long as I could, that even the worst landlords did not 
realise the wrongs they were committing, for atten- 
tion had never been called to these things, and custom 
fitted poor folks into old houses, blaming them for the 
filth they could not prevent. And so long as public 
sentiment tolerated, nay, was complacently satisfied 
with filth, vice, degradation and disease, what better 
could we expect of the landlords? So I said nothing 
about the men, only showing what enormous rentals 
were collected from the old death traps, and the suf- 
ferings of the poor who lived in them. 

I have spoken of our " enemies," or, more 
rightly, our opponents. How much more is there to 
be said of my friends ! In fact, if I should set down 
their names, their graces and their kindnesses, as 
gratitude dictates, " the scroll could not contain the 
whole," and the story would have to end untimely. 

There were a few who stood by me both in and out 
of working hours. Foremost of these, and most con- 
stant, were the Coxes and the Foors. They often 
came over to the hotel, and sometimes beguiled me 




DEFENDERS OF THE HOMES OF INDIANA 



Mrs. Linton A. Cox 
Dr. J. D. Foor 



Senator Linton A. Cox^ 
Prest. Indiana House Assn. 

Mrs. J. D. Foor 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 207 

out of it. Mrs. Cox was In the Senate some time 
every day, if possible. She often sat in Senator 
Cox's seat. Few men there could have filled it as 
well as she. Although a most devoted wife and 
mother, her broad and active mind took in the range 
of club, school, church, social and civic affairs, and 
even politics. What a stay she was, with her un- 
failing sympathy and cheer! Senator Cox was a 
very busy lawyer and real estate owner, prominent 
in the Commercial Club, and interested in the larger 
development of the city. He was also a philosopher, 
better fitted to cope with our present day legislation 
than my old teacher, Marcus Aurelius, though their 
spirits were akin. In all the years of our housing 
movement I have never seen him rufiled or discour- 
aged, or unable to find some good to believe of every 
one. He it was who arranged meetings, dissolved 
difficulties, removed barriers, planned steps, and 
brought the impossible to pass. Even those whose 
measures he fought, loved and respected him, and his 
word was like a gold certificate. 

The Foors gave invaluable help. It was a great 
thing to have Dr. Foor's championship. A man of 
few but forceful words, he was a power in the House, 
Men followed his lead because they had faith both in 
his judgment and his integrity. I can see him now 



208 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

as he strode to the front of the House, and, with a 
word, produced results and set wheels in motion that 
had refused to turn, 

Mrs. Foor was a constant comfort, partly because 
of her own interest in our cause, and partly because 
that increased her husband's. She had taken a clerk- 
ship to be with him, as they had no family. Being 
also a newspaper correspondent, she had the freedom 
of the floor, and she knew every one there. Quiet, 
womanly, modest, she was held in a respect that gave 
her distinct influence. 

Her experience had taught her all the little ins and 
outs of legislative matters that I didn't want to 
bother the men by asking about. She was always 
ready to accompany me to one of the rooms or offices 
where our business took us, and her watchful care 
more than once saved our bill from disaster. When 
I went home, she took my place, and went without 
rest or meals, if necessary, when emergencies arose. 
As the men had other bills to look after, and were 
kept busy in their seats most of the session, they gave 
me instructions as to the diff'erent processes our bill 
had to go through, so that I might keep close watch 
of it. Every inch of the way, from clerk to clerk, 
to the engrossing room and back again, I watched 
its going and coming, its ingress and egress, lest 
strong and jealous hands should harm it. In all of 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 209 

this, and in the reading of the proof, Mrs. Foor was 
untiring. 

Other friendly faces lighted the gloom of the assem- 
bly rooms, and redeemed the arid wastes of hotel 
life, I can see now the sweet, bright face of Mrs. 
Will Wood, of whom even a glimpse or greeting 
would " gie strength anew to me.'' Senator Wood 
was the dean of our Senate, an authority whom we 
all consulted, and an orator whose eloquence was 
always ready for our cause. 

If I should fail to record my gratitude to Mr. Joe 
Cravens, so many years majority leader of the House, 
my story ought to plant its feet squarely in the 
I road and refuse to proceed. That big, breezy, cheery 
" Don't you worry " of his (and he was too busy for 
more than that) did more to keep my heart up than 
he ever knew. Mr. Eschbach, the minority leader, 
calm, cool and quiet, was another tower of strength. 
With two such men believing in our cause, and its 
1 vital importance to public welfare, the others must 
1 at least listen to our arguments. 
] Sometimes friends came up from Evansville, on 
! business. How good the home folks looked, espe- 
iCially the ones that I knew stood for civic improve- 
jment, and all I was fighting for. Some of them un- 
dertook missions and errands for me, and one of our 
-most active workers, Mr. Will French, stayed over 



210 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

to help at the state house, and we went in to call on 
Governor Marshall together. After our kind recep- 
tion, I felt new courage. 

In the state house my headquarters were in the 
office of Mr. Amos W. Butler, secretary of the State 
Board of Charities. There I was " at home," and 
could hang my coat upon its own hook, and likewise 
hang up my confidence upon the whole office force. 
To Mr. Butler I went for tutelage and advice on 
special matters. When things went wrong I took 
haven there, and when luck came our way I stopped 
to tell them all the good news. The office of the 
State Board of Health was another refuge. No 
other board in the country has taken such a part 
in housing reform. But it wasn't only Dr. Hurty's 
direct help, in our battles, that I valued. To know 
that Dr. Hurty, Dr. Wishard, and the whole board 
were giving our cause their moral support, that they 
felt about dirt and disease, water and sewerage, 
space, light and air, just as I did, and that they were 
willing to share the responsibility of the reform, 
with absolute fearlessness, was a comfort to me be- 
yond words. 

There was one friend who was the angel of my 
darkest hours. In the hotel was living at the time 
a lovely gracious widow, with two grown sons. Once 
over the threshold of her apartments I breathed 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 211 

peace, and forgot my battles. While she brewed tea 
she kept a gentle raillery on the bubble. For head- 
aches and heart aches there were soft pillows and soft 
words, hot water bottles and warm encouragement. 
May all space and eternal sunshine be hers — the 
blessing of a housing reformer! 

I was feeling pretty much at home, and had hardly 
seen a hint of trouble, when our bill came up for its 
second reading in the House. By this time I was 
used to hearing the debates, but — how different de- 
bates sound when they are about our own bill ! And 
it was trying not to be able to say one word, myself, 
to those arguments whose answers I knew so well. 
From all over the House came discussion and dissen- 
sion. I was aghast to see that some of those pleas- 
ant gentlemen with whom I had talked were hurrying 
little pink slips up to the desk, and amendments were 
hurtling like cannon balls. It was terrifying! And 
here, beside me, uprose one old gentleman, whom I 
was sure I had converted from some errors of thought. 
He stretched out his hand, and showed me an amend- 
ment he was about to offer, that would have cut down 
the application of our bill to just a few cities. 

Half rising, I laid my hand on his sleeve. " Oh, 

Mr. S , don't do that ! Please don't do that ! " 

I implored. And he sat down. Afterwards the 
ludicrous side of my appeal struck me. What aa 



212 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

argument! But he knew the arguments that were 
choking me, and it was these that stayed his hand. 

I began to think that the cannon balls would never 
stop flying, when our men brought the battle to a 
close by a skilful manoeuvre, and the amendments 
were all referred to the Health committee. When 
the committee convened to pass upon them, I was 
asked to sit with them. Dr. Foor, the chairman, sat 
at the head of the long table, in the committee room, 
with members ranged down both sides, and I sat at 
the foot. Then it was that I saw the good of my 
long summer of study. It facilitated matters greatly 
to know what would be the effect of each amendment, 
as the progressive steps of housing legislation in other 
states had shown. 

In their enthusiasm the men would have gone far- 
ther than I dared. So, yielding some points, and 
standing our ground on others, we were able to keep 
the bill from being materially injured in its vital 
points. 

Now came a lull, and I went home, to await an- 
other call. 

How good it was to be at home, to find all well 
and safe; to sit quietly with the family around the 
fire, away from the noise and tobacco smoke. It 
was good to find that all the cataclysms of the legis- 
lature had not made one crack in the earth's crust. 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 213 

in our yard. I wanted to lave in domesticity; to 
scrub the children, to dust and make beds, to cook 
a little, as a way of shaking ojfF the nightmare of the 
legislature. 

Some of our friends came up to express their in- 
terest. 

" But didn't you feel odd up there, among all those 
men? " one asked. 

" Not any more than you do in a bank or a church 
or a theatre or a hotel or a street car, or on the 
street, where men are coming and going," I answered. 
Then I described how the wives of some of the mem- 
bers were always present ; how often they would bring 
the children over from their hotels to meet the father, 
about time for adjournment. I told how I had seen 
a father, with a small baby in his arms, standing at 
the rear of the House, while the mother occupied his 
seat, give the child back to the mother and stride 
forward to make a motion. Besides, the high school 
classes came to listen, and clubs often attended. 

My friend was still incredulous. ** But I would 
feel so conspicuous," she insisted. 

" If you were trying to save a child who was in a 
burning building, you wouldn't think about the fire- 
men or the by-standers, and they wouldn't notice 
yx)u," I answered. 

When I went back to the capitol I found that 



214 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

enemies had been busy. Letters had been pouring 
in, and a horde of landlords had come in my absence, 
and camped on the grounds. They had raised a 
great outcry about their "rights," and had been 
stirring up opposition and sowing doubts. Some of 
my new-made friends came to me with anxious ques- 
tions about various passages of the bill, and I 
had to go over all my arguments again and again, 
and show what other states had done in the way of 
tenement laws. Some of our enemies were frank and 
open in their opposition, and fought face to face. 
Others came and sowed their tares and slunk away, 
not dreaming that we had their names. The most 
vicious lobby of all stayed with us, and was at my 
heels like a black shadow, wherever I turned. We 
knew its manifold work by signs of a familiar " hid- 
den hand," at every step, until we felt that we were 
fighting the Powers of Darkness. We had no weap- 
ons to match with men who, as evidence showed, 
employed thugs in their home towns to carry out 
their evil purposes by force. 

One by one (watching the course of legislation) I 
learned all the ways in which a bill may be killed, 
by strangling, mangling, delays, " jokers," interpola- 
tions, even by theft, as several stories went. " Sad- 
der and wiser " was I, indeed. Each new evidence of 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 215 

cunning and craft made me more alert and deter- 
mined. 

One day the bill disappeared. An important step 
had been delayed, while we waited, with impatience, 
for some of the red tape to unwind, that we supposed 
was holding things back. Our insistent demands 
started a search, and clerks ransacked tables, desks 
and pigeonholes. 

" It's gone ! We can't find it ! " they declared. 
I brought Mr. Cox, and he set others to searching. 
In that anxious half hour I realised the lengths to 
which I would have gone if foul play or outrage had 
overtaken us. I thought of all the powers of right 
and justice that could be ranged on our side, and a 
new and sudden strength came to me. If necessary, 
we would lay siege to the whole administration. Just 
as I was making up my mind whether I should go to 
the Governor first, the clerk stooped down and looked 
into the big safe. We held our breath. " It's not 
there," he said, in a tone of finality. 

" Let me see," I said, stooping also. " Yes, there 
it is — that big one, there. Take it out." 

Sure enough, it was ours, safe and sound. We had 
been hurt only by delay. But the incident made us 
more watchful. 

Now the members of the legislature who owned 



216 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

property were becoming aroused. Some of our 
strongest and most dangerous opposition came from 
men, in both houses, who owned tenements, or whose 
brothers, cousins or clients owned them, as we dis- 
covered later. One member wanted to build stores 
on twenty-foot lots, and put tenements above them. 
Another fought the law for two sessions, under the 
impression that it would apply to his single houses, 
not reading the bill carefully enough to get the defini- 
tion of " tenement.'^ 

One man wanted to change the whole law, so that 
his wife could cover an entire lot with apartments, 
except for insufficient air shafts, that would leave 
dim and poorly ventilated inside rooms. He fol- 
lowed me from House to Senate, through the corri- 
dors and back again, arguing for amendments to fit 
the plan which he held in his hand. 

" Go and talk to the men about it," I said, worn 
out, finally. 

" No, I want to talk to you, because the men will 
do whatever you say," he insisted. 

" Indeed they will not," I said ; " but we can't en- 
tertain a thought of any such amendments." Still 
he hung on. 

" Then tell me what to do with that land that will 
pay as much on the investment, and I'll be satisfied." 

Even though I expected the opposition of selfish 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 217 

interests, I was surprised to see the unabashed way 
in which money, " vested rights," were weighed 
against human life, health, safety and happiness ; to 
see how individual interest was urged against public 
good. It was sickening and shocking to see a man 
fight against the interests of all the people in the 
state, and seek to fasten upon the thousands of poor 
in our cities, and upon their children, preventable 
miseries, all for the sake of the paltry rental of a 
few wretched dark rooms, or the cost of a little plumb- 
ing. Many of them did not even plead the common 
cause of landlords. It was, " My house.'' " It will 

cost 771^." 

There were no other arguments to offer against the 
bill. No one came forward to say that society would 
be better off if our dwellings were unregulated and 
unsanitary. No one could show that it was against 
the interests of the State to protect the poor. True, 
there was a faint murmur of " paternalism,'' though 
we already had on our statute books laws requiring 
light and air in factories and stores, sanitation in 
mines, etc. " Paternalism " ! Yet this legislature 
was soon to vote appropriations to provide for the 

I paternal care of the State over hundreds of its un- 
; fortunate citizens. And every one seemed willing 
'^ that the State should be a step-father to the orphans 
pf the wprl^ing men who died of tuberculosis and 



218 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

typhoid in our old death traps, leaving their chil- 
dren wards of the State. Why should not the State 
prevent the deaths and cost? But most people do 
not get wildly excited over public cost, I found. 
Parties do, but ours was a non-partisan bill. 

The strongest opposition came from little towns, 
that were not willing to yield even so much space on 
their building lots as New York City gives! It 
seemed that the landlords and builders, of a certain 
type, all over the state were all awake, and were 
uniting their forces against us. But the friends of 
the poor — where were they.? Sound asleep, for all 
they knew of our fight, having bestowed their alms 
and said their prayers, and carefully shut their win- 
dows on the slum side. Oh, to rattle all those win- 
dows, and shake those beds, and summon the sleepers 
to help us ! 

It gives me a pride in our men to remember that 
almost all our active fighting was done by supporters 
inside the assembly. We had no lobbies, as our 
enemies had. Our men had to do their own rallying. 
True, members of the Commercial Club came and 
went, and Mr. Grout was with us, and others of the 
Charities organisation. Our friends in the state house 
stood by, staunchly. Some of the wide-awake minis- 
ters of the city stopped in to give help and cheer. A 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 219 

few influential women of the city came with Mrs. 
Cox, Mrs. T. C. Day the foremost and most en- 
thusiastic. But these were a scattering few, and 
none of them could stay right on the spot, as the 
landlords did. 

If our bill could have gone to a final vote the first 
week of the session, we would have had a sweeping 
victory, for enthusiasm was white hot. But it took 
much stoking to keep up the necessary warmth of 
feeling, with all the cold water our enemies were pour- 
ing on. Any day, we could have polled a majority 
of members, by counting those who were sorry for 
the poor, and were willing to see their wrongs righted. 
But to get a majority who had no doubts that the 
bill would do all it was planned to do, and still be 
fair to the landlords, was another thing. It began 
to be a question with our doubting and wavering 
friends, whose arguments should prevail, ours or our 
enemies. We brought men whose judgment and in- 
tegrity were beyond doubt, to pit their arguments for 
humanity and public welfare against those of nar- 
row self-interest. I was ready, in my desperation, 
to have summoned Jove himself, from Mount Olym- 
pus, if we could have reached him. 

At this point Hon. W. J. Bryan came to Indian- 
- apolis, and it was arranged that he should address 



220 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the legislature. Great was the enthusiasm, and ail 
honour guard was sent to escort him to the state 
house. 

Waiting in the empty rooms, with Edward Mee- 
man, a young newspaper man from Evansville, I 
mused unhappily upon the thunders that this mighty 
man should hurl, that we could no more borrow than 
those of Jove. And yet, why not? His subject 
was to include many themes of social welfare. Why 
not housing reform.? 

" Come with me — quick ! " I said to Mr. Meeman. 
** Fm going to ask Mr. Bryan to say a word for hous- 
ing reform. Hurry — we have just time to get to 
the Governor's rooms before they get back ! '' 

Through the long empty corridors we sped, and 
down the marble stairway, not waiting for the ele- 
vator. A guard was pacing up and down in front 
of the Governor's outer room, which was empty. 

*' When Mr. Bryan arrives," I said to him, " I 
want you to see that I have a chance to speak to him, 
just one moment, before any one else does, without 
interruption. It's very important. Please, won't 
you?" 

The guard promised, and we took our stand just 
inside the open door, exactly where a receiving party 
would have stood. Governor Marshall's broad policy 
and his strong stand upou all matters of the poor, 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 221 

and of public health and morals, was well known. 
Here, I felt, under the protection of the Father of 
his State, at the fountain source of Justice, I wasi 
in sanctuary, and my cause would be heard. 

Down the corridors came the sound of voices, and 
the tramp of many feet, steadily drawing nearer. I 
had the feeling of standing on a railroad track, in 
front of an approaching train, as if I must step 
aside. But I stood fast. And now they were at 
the door. Mr. Bryan himself stepped across the 
threshold, and I greeted him, as a rather timid hostess 
might have done, " I must speak to you one min- 
ute," I said earnestly. Instantly, with smiling 
courtesy, he stepped aside and gave me audience. In 
three or four sentences I presented the situation, and 
asked him if he could not include housing reform in 
the topics of his speech. 

" If it comes within the line of my subject, I will," 
he said heartily and kindly, and I slipped away, hav- 
ing been hardly noticed. 

Among the great throng of listeners who heard 
Mr. Bryan in the assembly room, no one was more 
attentive than I, waiting to hear some word upon! 
our subject. One great theme of public welfare after! 
another was taken up. Suddenly a little page whis- 
, pered to his mother, " Listen, Mamma, Mr. BryaU 
is speaking for Mrs. Bacon^s bill." Neither bill nor 



222 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

name had been mentioned, so it is obvious how clear 
he made his meaning. I was indeed profoundly grate- 
ful for those eloquent and forceful words, for I knew 
how much they meant to our cause. 

And now the days dragged on, while we fought 
for every inch of ground upon which we stood. I 
began to get tired and discouraged and homesick. 
Once, when a Senate reading of our bill was due, I 
had been waiting all day to hear it called. The 
Coxes were kept at home by illness, and all of my 
friends were busy or preoccupied. A great mass of 
bills clogged the machinery of the Senate. Long 
windy debates took up the time, and, while they were 
proceeding, I would steal out into the corridors, too 
nervous to sit still and listen. Every time the clerk 
picked up another bill, and would call out " Senate 
bill number — — " a cannon ball seemed to have 
struck me over the heart. But he never got to " No. 
51.'' 

When it was too late in the afternoon for another 
bill to be brought up, I went wearily back to the 
hotel. Even the sight of the little pages made me 
homesick. Appreciating the effect of physical con- 
ditions on psychological states, I ordered a substan- 
tial dinner — but I couldn't swallow it. There 
seemed to be lumps in everything, even the consomme. 
Dr. Simison, a member of the Health committee in the 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 223 

House, and one of our most valued supporters, came 
out from dinner and found me sitting limp and dismal 
on the balcony. " What's the trouble ? " he asked 
kindly. 

"I want to go home, and stay^ — but I won't," 
I said, and stopped and set my teeth, for fear of chok- 
ing. 

He had some new ideas and some good vigorous 
plans to suggest, and offered to start them going. 
That, of course, was more cheering than sympathy, 
and set me up at once with new hope. 

That was the nearest I ever came to bolting. 

The next day was spent in the same anxious wait- 
ing, until the suspense became unbearable. Finally, 
I called a page and sent a card up to the Lieutenant- 
governor. It read " Dear Governor Hall : Please 
make Senate bill No. 61 a special order for to-mor- 
row. I've been waiting so long, and I must go home 
to my children." 

He might have told me to run along home, then, 
and 'tend to my children, that the others could look 
after the biUs. But he didn't. He was too kind 
hearted. 

Our bill was made a special order for the next day. 

A brief visit home found the family thriving and 
prospering, and sent me back with renewed courage, 
to cheer our fagged and weary leaders. 



224 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

As the end of the session drew near, delays were 
more dangerous, and the danger of losing our bill 
was more serious. 

It would be too long a story to tell of the succes- 
sive stages of the fight, and the agony of suspense 
at the many critical moments, when loss or injury 
threatened. Though I would not admit it, fear cor- 
roded my heart. I tried to argue myself out of an 
unreasonable solicitude about the bill. None of the 
men seemed to feel about their measures as if they 
were matters of life and death, however in earnest 
they were. And it was the Lord's work, for His 
poor. He would take care of it. But suppose I 
failed in my part, and hindered the cause? The lash 
that had driven me to leave my home still hung sus- 
pended over me now. I knew that the loss of the 
cause would be something deadlier than failure, more 
desperate than defeat. A sense of responsibility 
added largely to this feeling. The measure was 
called " Mrs. Bacon's bill '' by every one, even by 
the press, and actually scheduled that way a few 
times on the legislative bulletin boards, though, of 
course, it should have borne the names of " Mat- 
tingly " and ^' McGinnis,'' from the men who intro- 
duced it. 

And, even though doctors and lawyers, architects 
and real estate men, as well as the members of the 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 225 

legislature themselves, had mended and amended, 
carved and whittled it, I knew that I would be held 
accountable by reformers for all it failed to do, and 
by landlords and builders for all that restricted 
ithem. 

All these months, while I had seen before me the 
cities of the state spread out, as on a map, with all 
their black spots, I had seen the poor in those spots. 
Now, rising up out of all those places, and hanging 
over the poor, I saw the owners of the slums. It was 
like a storm cloud, made up of angry faces. There 
was the anger, resentment, greed, to confront, as 
well as the poverty, illness, and misery of the poor, 
whom I was there to represent. But I knew I could 
face the anger, if we won, better than the misery, if 
we failed. 

The situation was growing critical. We seemed 
to be losing ground, and our men were grave and 
troubled. Then came days when I could not eat or 
read or sleep, when every breath was a prayer. 

Once I heard Dr. Farr speak of *vthe loneliness 
of leadership.'' Now I knew what that meant. 

I was alone. In a desert place. The sky bent down 
over me like a great transparent bowl, shutting out 
everything else. I stood in the centre of a vast bare 
space, bounded by the circular rim of that bowl. All 



226 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

around the edge of the great circle were my friends, 
reaching out their hands to me, smiling and trying 
to help me, but they could come no nearer. The 
loneliness would have been insupportable, only for 
this: inside the circle, all the space about me, under 
the bowl of the sky, was filled with the Presence ! 

No matter where I went, that circle seemed to be 
about me, visible to the inner eye, and to hold every 
one away. The men I talked to, in the assembly, 
were all outside of it, and it seemed to me they must 
be as conscious of it as I was. 

At last the decisive hour came, with the third read- 
ing of the bill, in both houses. By a coincidence they 
came at the same time. An excited messenger from 
the House found me in the corridor and hurried me 
in, just in time to hear the debate beginning. It 
was hardly under headway when a still more excited 
sergeant came post haste from the Senate, saying 
I was wanted at once, as the fight was on. 

The battle was going bravely in the House, so I 
followed the messenger across the corridor to the 
other skirmish line. We had a hasty conference, and, 
to my consternation, I was directed to sit in a chair 
in front of all the desks, to be on hand when amend- 
ments came up. 

Our men had made a last poll of the Senate, and 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 227 

now went up and down the aisles, rallying adherents 
to our standard. One of our men wa^ absent, from 
sickness, and Senator Durre, from home, took his 
place, and was doing the work of four men, in his 
strong, whole-souled way, that was inspiriting to see. 

There came an ominous lull, and then the storm 
hroke. Of all the contests I had witnessed, this was 
the most severe. The whole Senate was on its feet, 
and the men would draw into a great knot, to be 
driven back to their seats repeatedly by the thunder- 
ing of the gavel. 

There came word that the bill had passed in the 
House. But here came an amendment from a Terre 
Haute member, which would cut the bill off just 
above his city, and leave only our largest two. An 
uproar — the amendment carried. 

Then began the jSnal roU caU. The men drew 
close together in the front of the room, as the voting 
began. Now we lacked seven votes. Absent mem- 
bers were rounded up. Two votes lacking — another 
canvass. 

Then two came over to our side — we had won ! 

I came to myself to find that I was pacing the 
aisle, inside the railing, with hands tightly clenched, 
unaware of having gone upon the floor. It was an 
hour and a half past the noon closing hour, but no 
one had thought of the time. Now I realised that 



228 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

exhaustion and strain had reached their limit, and 
felt somewhat dizzily happy. 

Quietly, after congratulations, the men and women 
melted away out of the Senate chamber. The heroes 
of the day, in House and Senate, who had saved it 
only by superhuman eflPorts, turned to other busi- 
ness, as if they had done nothing especial. I tried 
to tell them something of what I felt, but — words ! 
For such service! And it was done for their State, 
too. It seemed to me that they should have had a 
salute of cannon; at least there should have been 
martial music, and a roll of drums. 

It is for such deeds that men used to be given 
bay wreaths and knighthood. But theirs are the 
bays, and they are knights who need no accolade. 

There were a few final things to be done. Then 
came the audience with Governor Marshall, and his 
gracious promise to sign the bill. There were some 
last little meetings and social gatherings with our 
friends, and then farewells. Every one was so cor- 
dial and so glad for me. One of the senators, who 
had been most helpful, said, " Mrs. Bacon, I'm a 
hold-over member, and I hope we will see you back 
next session." 

" Oh, thank you," I said, " but I'm through now, 
and I never expect to come again." 



THE FIRST CAMPAIGN 229 

*^ I think you'll be here again," he said, smiling. 
But I was sure in my heart that it would not be 
necessary. 

With a light and care-free heart I gathered up 
my belongings, packing among them, for souvenirs, 
some worn and marked copies of our bill. 

And now, home! 



CHAPTER IX 

DEFEAT 

On a western bound train two men sat discussing a 
building project, in tones calculated to drown the 
roar of the train. Those on near-by seats soon dis- 
covered, from the localities they mentioned, that they 
were from Indiana, 

" No, we've given it up,'' said one man. ** We 
can't build the way we wanted to, because a crazy lit- 
tle woman, down in the southern part of the state, 
has gone and played the mischief by getting a tene- 
ment law that upsets everything." 

It was the lady in front of them who told me 
about it. 

The smoke of battle had hardly cleared away, after 
the legislature, before an Indianapolis paper came 
out with an article, under big black head lines, 

"MRS. BACON'S LAW STOPS FLAT 
BUILDING " 

The article took my breath for the moment, just 

as I had begun to breathe again. I knew the law 

^30 



DEFEAT 231 

wouldn^t stop flat building. Of course we had ex- 
pected the same fuss and worry that a tenement law 
has always created, in other states, until builders 
get used to them, and begin to see their value. 

The next news from Indianapolis was that a suit 
had been brought to test the constitutionality of the 
law. The test was made in the case of a very hand- 
some flat, that failed to conform to the law in some 
slight particular. Of course, the enemies of the 
law selected a case that would make it seem the most 
absurd, so as to render it unpopular. But we ex- 
pected that, too. We knew that the main point upon 
which the public had to be educated was not the 
necessity of improving the wretched conditions of 
the poor, but the reasons why the better class of 
flats and apartment houses had to be included. 
They had to realise that the dark room and bad 
plumbing are as deadly in a fashionable flat as in a 
squalid tenement row, and that fire is no respector 
of mansions. They had to realise, too, that Rich 
Man's Row in time often becomes Poverty Flats, as 
the tide of fashion ebbs. But they hadn't learned 
it yet. 

While I was wondering who was to defend the 

suit, besides the City of Indianapolis, I received a 

! brief letter from Senator Cox, simply stating that 

he had joined in the defence, as if it were a matter 



232 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

of course. It was characteristic of him to do it in 
that way. From that time on he has carried a big 
part of the burden of the housing movement in In- 
diana, with all its work and responsibilities. 

The case dragged for some time, but the outcome 
may be speedily and joyfully stated — our side won. 

Now the matter settled down to the enforcement 
of the law in the two cities to which its application 
had been limited by the amendment of its enemies. 
In Indianapolis it was enforced by the building in- 
spector, but, as Evansville had not even created such 
an ofBce, it devolved upon the Board of Health. Our 
board, though fully in sympathy, found in a very 
short time that both their funds and forces were 
inadequate for this purpose. Of course, in a city 
of 70,000, there was work enough to keep a force 
of inspectors busy, and I felt sure that we would get 
one. But it was no simple matter to create the 
ofBce. 

I visited each councilman in turn, and received 
enough assurances to make me feel confident of get- 
ting our inspector — some day. " When the build- 
ing ordinance passes we can get an inspector, but we 
can't get one without the ordinance," they all told 
me. 

That same old dusty ordinance! Still in the 
pigeon hole! 



DEFEAT 233 

So we were to wait, then, " till Bimam Wood do 
come to Dunsinane ''? 

Not so! 

At the next council meeting, Mr. Joseph Igleheart, 
president of the Civic Improvement Society, appeared 
with me, and joined in a request for a building in- 
spector. 

We were given the kind and cordial reception which 
I have invariably received from councils, which makes 
me wonder why women are afraid to go to such meet- 
ings. Women deal with the same men in the 
grocery, the bank or the coal ofBce, and come out 
ahead. Why, then, should they feel timid about 
meeting them in session? If they will only not, 7U)t 
be belligerent and antagonistic, but simply pleasant, 
persistent, and always watchful, they will generally 
win. Of course, they must make reasonable demands, 
must be well backed, and must see in advance that 
popular opinion is created on their side, by proper 
publicity. They should not bother with petitions, 
but see that enough substantial men visit each mem- 
ber first, and put the case strongly. The rest is 
easy. 

" I only want to know what the people want," one 
of the councilmen said. 

It made our visits much pleasanter that our Mayor 
stood strongly for law enforcement, that one of the 



234 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

councilmen had belonged to my circle of men's 
Friendly Visitors, and that the City Attorney had 
also been one. They knew how true was the 
story we told the council of our need for the means 
to enforce the new tenement law. Other members of 
the Civic Improvement Society came to help us, but 
after a few meetings Mr. Igleheart and I kept on 
alone. We found that the council was sticking on 
that big ordinance. " But can't we have a simple, 
short, plain ordinance, that simply creates the office 
of building inspector? " we asked. 

" You go and prepare such an ordinance, and we 
will consider it," we were told. 

We hastened to comply, and brought back a neat 
little measure, at the next meeting. It was not 
passed at once, so we went on until I left town for 
the summer, and then Mr. Igleheart kept on, alone, 
until it was passed. Shortly after, the Mayor ap- 
pointed S. A. Brentano as our first building in- 
spector, and he set about a faithful enforcement of 
the law. 

I realised keenly, while engaged in this effort, how 
much easier it is to do civic work with home as a 
centre and a base. 

How good it was to be at home again, to resume 
my accustomed Identity, to which I felt almost a 
stranger; to be again a Person, no longer merely a 



DEFEAT 235 

disembodied, homeless Plea ! I was avid of all those 
usual, homely things that all people do, so eager to 
get back Into the same " rut " again that I wel- 
comed even the commonest tasks. 

It was so good to get out doors, after confinement 
In the hotel and the state house, to feel the fresh air 
and the sun, to run about the lawn and find where the 
Ihyaclnths and jonquils were coming up. In their same 
old places. Good, even, to clean house and preserve 
strawberries. When May came, and I could sit In 
diaphanous gown and light slippers, on the lawn, 
by the great wingella bush, that was a fountain of 
rosy sprays, at last I could shake off that hateful 
feeling of a coat of mall. One must have the " doub- 
let and hose In one's disposition " to endure It long. 
Never had feminine frills seemed so satisfying to me. 
I found a pleasure even In teas, feeling much as 
Robinson Crusoe did, I Imagine, on his return to 
civilisation. 

Then came June, with a bevy of girls, in a house 
party for our own daughters, both home from school. 
June, and the world was young with the young life 
that filled the house with music and light and laugh- 
ter. There was the flash of shimmering gowns, and 
the glow of bright young faces. The mornings 
sparkled and the evenings dreamed, and the world 
was sweet with roses. 



236 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Midsummer came. We went away from the blaz- 
ing streets to the fresh coolness of the lakes, for a 
long rest, 

I cannot remember what happened in the fall, ex- 
cept that I spoke once, to the State Federation of 
Women's Clubs. 

The rest of the fall, and much of the whole year 
that followed, has been blotted out of my memory 
by the sudden shock of a great bereavement that 
overwhelmed our home. 

I do not know how to go on with the story, from 
this place, for it seems as if it ought to stop here, 
as our life stopped, for so many long months. 
Again and again I have come to this place, faltered 
and hesitated, and laid down my pen. It is a time 
that can neither be dwelt upon nor passed over. 
There is much of it, too, that belongs to this story. 
But — no, I cannot bring myself to write more than 
to say that it was the sudden death of our eldest 
daughter, Margaret. 

• ••••••• 

The winter was long and hard and dreary. The 
world was old, now. It was old and grey. There 
was constant illness in our family, that kept me close, 
with anxious nursing. But the winter wore away, 
and the spring dragged through. I began to feel a 
craving for work, employment, something to force 



DEFEAT 237 

my mind to new channels. Though still too weak 
from the shock to do much, I went back to the 
Working Girls' Association, of which I was yet presi- 
dent, and began, also, to visit the poor. 

" Surely you will lay aside all your outside work, 
now," some of my friends said. *^ You owe it to 
yourself and your family, and all other obligations 
are cancelled at such times." 

But the outside interest helped the whole family, 
I said. And if it were intended that we should be 
isolated, and set aside a part of our lives to be dedi- 
cated to grief, we would be given desert islands 
where we might be alone. But, so long as our lives 
touched others, it seemed to me that each point of 
contact was a responsibility. , And so the family felt. 

I mention these things because this is a story of 
work, and I wish that every one upon whom sorrow 
has fallen could realise the healing power of some 
unselfish interest that is exacting enough to force 
absorbing attention. Well for those who have such 
interests before sorrow comes, for they are difficult 
to acquire afterwards. The man of business, the 
woman who makes a living, are forced to meet the 
world, and find relief in work. But women of the 
idle class, who alone are shut up by corroding con- 
ventionalities, have no escape from themselves, even 
though they travel. 



238 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

If work, in itself, is helpful, how much more so is 
that spending of one's energies in a way that will 
help others. But, most of all, is there a tonic and 
balm in the personal giving of aid and comfort to 
those who have lost more than we have, under re- 
peated afflictions. * 

One of the few things I remember, that year, is a 
visit from, Jacob Riis. I had been planning for two 
years that our state should have the privilege of 
hearing him, and now others had gone intb the plan, 
and he was to be with us, early in the winter. His 
tour began in the northern part of the state, and 
wherever he went the people met him with enthusi- 
asm, and still hold his memory in reverence. 

He was to visit our city last. " But perhaps I'd 
better not come now," he wrote. It would have been 
a grief to miss him, and so our friends attended to 
the details of his lecture, and he was here, in our 
home, for a brief bright space that our family can 
never forget. " Here," we say, " is where he sat, 
on this side of the fire, when he set our children on 
his knee, and told them stories of his boyhood in 
Denmark, and legends of their heroes." We knew 
there were none of them braver than he, and that the 
little decoration of knighthood he wore, given by 
the hand of the Danish king, symbolised also what 



DEFEAT 239 

was heartily accorded him by the loyal love of the 
American people. 

But we knew more — we were " receiving a 
prophet," and his presence was a benediction. 

Along later In the year, I do not remember the 
month, there came a challenge to all my powers. 

Certain men. In Indianapolis and Evansvllle, were 
beginning to find out that the restrictions of our 
tenement law hampered them, and a number of them 
prepared a bill, purporting to correct the " mis- 
takes " of our law, which, instead, would have taken 
the virtues out of it. 

There was no Indiana Housing Association, then, 
but Mr. Cox did the work of president, boards and 
committees, just the same, always knew just what 
was needed to be done, and he said " not to be 
uneasy." 

Of course, we were bound to see that if any bill 
were introduced It should really be an Improvement 
upon the old law, by making It broader and stronger. 
This meant that the authors of the proposed bill 
should have demonstrated to them just what the 
effect of every change would be. There was no one 
In the United States who could do that with such 
authority and conclusiveness as could Mr. Lawrence 



240 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Veiller. As secretary of the National Housing As- 
sociation he heard our call, and came out twice to 
help us, all the way from New York, spending many 
days in slavish labour for which Indiana owes him her 
profound appreciation. 

While he was at Indianapolis we made a tour of 
the slums of that city. We took with us a number of 
prominent citizens, and plenty of reporters, and I 
had the satisfaction of having the greatest housing 
expert in this country, and one of the foremost in 
the world, verify my statements as to just how bad 
those slums were. But noses and eyes gave conclu- 
sive verification, and some of the bulwarks of our 
present housing movement are those who went that 
day. 

All this time Mr. Cox had been quietly busy, and 
the Civic Commission of the Commercial Club had 
been made aware of our impending danger. 

With magnificent response they decreed a banquet, 
in Mr. Veiller's honour, and mine, at which should be 
gathered representative men, among them the friends 
of housing reform (who had grown to a goodly com- 
pany), including in the invitation the framers of the 
proposed dangerous bill, so that we might cement our 
purposes with pates and coffee, and friendly dis- 
cussion. 

The banquet was an entire success, in all the ways 



p 



DE.FEAT 241 



we desired. Sitting, with Mr. Veiller, between Presi- 
dent Miller and Dr. Wynne, the chairman of the 
commission, at the head of the tables, I looked down 
the long double line of men with a feeling of grati- 
tude for our strong support and the distinguished 
honour. The strength of our support was more ap- 
parent in the speeches that followed. 

The next day we got down to business at a lunch- 
eon of some of the Commercial Club men, including 
Mr. Cox, Mr. Grout and Mr. Winterrowd, then 
building inspector of the city, who is one of our main 
props and pillars. Architects and builders were pres- 
ent at our extended session, when we mowed, reaped, 
shocked, threshed, ground, sifted, baked, masticated 
and digested every grain of the proposed bill, Mr. 
Veiller presiding. Then he gathered up the views of 
the company, and took them back to New York, to 
reduce the chaos to order. He alone can tell of the 
time and toil it involved, and only those who have 
taken a hand in such work can appreciate the tale 
j of it. 

' Our story begins again with his second trip to 
I Indianapolis, when he sat once more in the Claypool, 
^^ with Mr. Cox and me, and took us over all of his 
j processes, till the words danced on the page, and 
all ran together. Then Mr. Cox called in the others 
who were interested in any changes that might be 



242 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

made, and we sat again for morning, afternoon and 
night sessions, until everybody understood every- 
thing, and all were agreed. 

There I sat, in discussion with those men, archi- 
tects, builders, real estate men, lawyers, doctors, 
bankers, charity workers, and with us was the great 
housing expert who had spent years of his life writ- 
ing, enforcing, and testing out tenement laws. Yet 
angry landlords ring up my 'phone, and demand to 
know why I decreed such and such regulations, echo- 
ing the woman who exclaimed vehemently, " Vat does 
she mean by sich foolishness? She'd better make 
another law, yet.'' 

It was great to see the masterful way in which Mr. 
Veiller met all questions, drawing swift diagrams to 
show what would happen if given dimensions were 
changed to certain others, etc. Finally, no one could 
ask any more questions, and we all shook hands and 
promised to work together for the bill we had agreed 
upton, and Mr. Veiller returned to New York. 

One of the things that makes this meeting memor- 
able is that herfe we became acquainted with Mr. Wil- 
son B. Parker, of Indianapolis, who represented the 
State Association of Architects in this matter. He 
has ever since been a valuable supporter of housing 
reform, and has been of aid in many trying hours. 

Now, of course, I would have to go back to the 



DEFEAT 243 

legislature! There was nothing else to do, much as 
I dreaded a second term, with a fear that it would 
give me the savour of a professional lobbyist, or a 
" crank." But here was the opportunity to try 
again for a state-wide law, and that was what I had 
started out to win, and could never be satisfied with- 
out. Moreover, the architects who were joining in 
the bill expected me to go back, to remedy the short- 
comings of the law of 1909 which had been caused by 
hasty amendments that injured several sections. 

Before the legislature opened I went up again to 
Indianapolis to help Mr. Cox to rally our forces, and 
see that all was ready, taking along my poster ex- 
hibit. I stayed over to see the installation of the 
new Speaker of the House, Mr. Albert J. Venneman, 
from our city. He had been one of our men's 
Friendly Visitors, and I knew, better than the others 
did, what justice every cause would have, and rejoiced 
for his interest in the poor — those thousands of 
constituents in our state whom our legislators so 
often forget that they represent. 

Many of our old friends were back in the legis- 
lature, and my reception was so cordial that it took 
away my dread of returning. Mr. McGinnis was; 
there, with his beautiful wife, and he agreed to look 
after our bill again in the House. Dr. Foor was 
there, stronger and more interested than ever, and 



2M BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

he was again chairman of the Health Committee, to 
which our bill, without doubt, would go. Mrs. Foor 
would be again on the floor, in the same capacities 
as before. There was never more faithful friend 
than she proved herself to be in the weeks that fol- 
lowed. 

Senator Cox's term had expired, but he was there 
every moment he could spare, and, though Mrs. Cox 
had less occasion to come, she was present, to cheer 
me on, when possible. I never saw them together 
without a whimsical wish that I could have just such 
a wife, to supplement my husband's help, with all 
those things that only women can do. 

We all met at the Claypool, where many friends of 
the last session were at home. Two other friends, 
Mr. and Mrs. William L. Taylor, had apartments at 
the hotel. He is so well known, beyond our states 
that it would be out of place to describe him. It 
was his record as Attorney General of Indiana, a 
short time before, that gave me the greatest pride in 
quoting his opinions on housing reform. As for her, 
and all that her friendship has meant to me, it needs 
some other words than prose to tell. 

At the hotel we gathered all our forces together, 
made our plans and our war maps, and prepared for 
the struggle before us. 

I was impatient to have our bill introduced before 



DEFEAT 245 

a rush of bills began, but some of the parties to 
it began to haggle over little points, and we were 
delayed until well into the session. As a result, I 
received word from Dr. Foor that our friends feared 
it was too late to get the bill through, and thought 
best not to report it out of the committee, and run 
the risk of having it defeated ! 

Counting over our friends and forces, I felt confi- 
dent that we could win, and took the next train to 
Indianapolis. Calling our old and new adherents 
together, Mr. Cox and I arranged for a committee 
hearing. There was Mr. Parker, who spoke strongly 
for the State Association of Architects, Dr. C. S. 
Woods, representing the local Board of Health, and 
Mr. Grout, representing the charities, with many 
others. But we might have spared our array of 
forces. " There's no need to present any argu- 
I ments," said one of the committee. " We have gone 
I over the bill and understand it, and are in favour 
4 of it. All I want to know is, whether Mrs. Bacon 
is satisfied with the bill — if it will do what she 
j i wants for the poor." 

That was certainly a great mark of confidence, but 
a still greater one was to follow. 

The bill was reported out at once, and, to save 
I the time wasted in delays, the leaders of the House 
j (both majority and minority) finding a strong ma- 



246 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

jorlty for the bill, put it through its second and 
third readings, under suspension of the rules. It was 
all over in five minutes, before I hardly realised what 
they were doing, and fairly took my breath. The 
papers said it was a " monument " to my efforts. I 
didn't know, then, what the monument would be used 
for, or what inscription would be written on it by the 
Senate. And the Senate was yet to try out. 

Now we found Senator Cox's knowledge of the 
men and of legislative methods invaluable. Moreover, 
his clean strong record gave him great influence with 
men of all parties. 

We had chosen Senator Edgar Durre, from Evans- 
ville, to take charge of the bill in the Senate. Al- 
though his party was now in the minority, and our 
strongest enemies were on the majority side, we felt 
that Senator Durre, with his brilliant ability, was a 
match for any dozen ordinary men. Besides, he un- 
derstood the subject better than the others, from his 
previous experience. 

There was little appearance of opposition at first, 
but the bill showed an ominous tendency to stick in 
the mill, between the two houses. Finally Mrs. 
Foor and I read a perfect proof, and my own hands 
put it into the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor, in 
the presence of the clerk. Promptly and smoothly it 
went through two readings, and then stuck fast. 



DEFEAT 247 

I had been warned, on our entrance to the Senate, 
that we would not be allowed to pass a state-wide 
law, but every poll showed a good majority in our 
favour. The men from my own district were " solid " 
for the bill, and helped strongly. Our friends in the 
House came in and helped, and Senator Durre threw 
all his strength and energy into the fight. Mr. Cox 
took almost the same part that he would have taken, 
if still a member. Besides this, I interviewed every 
one of the men myself. We kept constant note of 
friends or foes or " doubtfuls " on our legislative di- 
rectories, comparing notes as we made progress. 
And from day to day they showed a majority in our 
favour. 

But we did not dream to what lengths the opposi- 
tion would go. Stronger and more determined, the 
same vicious lobby was there again. It was made up 
of many elements, and exhibited a welding of power- 
ful interests, both inside and out of the legislature. 
There were in it men who made trips from their home 
j ] towns to fight the bill, with various weapons. Some 
^ sent their lawyers or agents. There were wealthy 
men in the lobby who owned rows and blocks of rot- 
ting tenements. Some of them were prominent in 
the church, and respected In society, In their own 
towns, and the people there were surprised later to 
learn of their tenements and their opposition. There 



248 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were others whose Infamies were as reeking as their 
hovels, whose names are odorous, not only in their 
own city, but through all the border, for intrigues 
and frauds and deeds of violence. " The Powers of 
Darkness " I have called this element, but the powers 
were all allied. The brilliant brain, the giant 
strength, and the cunning hand, all worked together 
in the dark to carry out purely selfish ends, with no 
thought of the interest of the state. And here were 
the friends of the State arrayed more strongly than 
ever, the State Board of Health, the State Board of 
Charities and Corrections, the local charities of the 
whole state, the press of the state, calling with one 
voice for the law, the State Association of Architects 
standing for its need and fairness, and many leaders 
of public thought besides. And the only arguments 
urged against the bill were those of the expense and 
inconvenience it caused the landlord or the builder! 
Yet we were asking only for the decencies, and the 
necessities of safety and sanitation. 

As in 1909, some of the members of the legislature 
openly avowed their tenements. Others denied hav- 
ing any, and we wondered at their opposition. But 
when I visited their home towns, later, I had the 
court house records examined, to see what property 
they, or their relatives owned, and even stumbled 
accidentally into some of their tenements, the worst 



DEFEAT 249 

in the town, when I went out with the charity workers 
of the place. 

It must not be supposed that I encountered these 
men, personally, in any unpleasant way. True, 
there was one Shadow ever at my heels, as before, 
but I was always accorded courtesy and respect. I 
was thankful for the ethics of the legislature, that 
prevented personalities, and was careful to be as 
fair and considerate. Naturally, my name was never 
mentioned, and " the author of the bill " meant Sen- 
ator Durre. Once, however, with significant glance 
and emphasis, one of the opposition declared that 
" It was not fair that one will should dominate that 
legislature." In a flash Senator Durre leaped to 
his feet. *^My will is not dominating this legisla- 
ture,'' he declared. 

Sitting at the side of the Senate was like perching 
on the rim of a great seething cauldron, wherein 
boiled and bubbled a mixture of all the matters of 
party interest, selfish and unselfish interest, and the 
interests of friends or clients. More varied ele- 
ments mingled their fumes than might have been 
Wended in a witch's brew — all the human passions, 
noble and ignoble, prejudices, emotions, plans, 
schemes. 

Orators dashed in herbs and pepper a-plenty, cool 
advisors cp-refully measured in the salt, lobbyists 



250 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

kept the fire burning furiously under the cauldron. 
But a few strong, skilful hands held the big ladle 
and stirred the pot. 

It looked hopeless to ever get anything out of 
that stew! 

Just to sit and look on afforded a wonderful op- 
portunity for the study of political methods, to say 
nothing of sociology and psychology. But, with the 
old spirit that would " rather be cheated to the last 
than lose the blessed hope of truth,'' I was loath 
to learn. My childish habit of putting my fingers 
in my ears and shutting my eyes would have pre- 
vailed, only that it was my duty to be vigilant and 
ever alert. One had only to sit still and have the 
picture reel unroll before him. As one person after 
another dropped into the seat beside me, bit by bit 
was added to the lesson of the day. I learned what 
customs and traditions had to be accepted in politics, 
as we accept all other things to which we are bom, 
our grandparents, and the climate, for instance. 
And I was impressed that Human Nature is just one 
simple cell, the same in slums, in salons, in assemblies. 

The lobby would have been surprised to know how 
much of their doings came to us, unsought. What 
was promised in saloons, what was plotted in cafes, 
or even in private apartments, came straight to us, 
from a myriad sources. The walls had both ears 



DEFEAT 251 

and eyes, and more " little birds " chirped informa- 
tion than ever broke woodland silence. But it all 
served only to make us aware how powerful were our 
enemies, and to warn us of the lengths to which they 
were willing to go. 

The history of various members was brought to us, 
land threw much light upon their votes and speeches. 
Sometimes — and it was sad to see — a man of many 
fine traits and impulses disappointed those who ex- 
pected better things of him, on account of being 
" tied up," or bound by outside obligations, so that, 
Hke Launcelot, " Faith in dishonour kept him falsely 
true." Seeing " the doubtful balance of rights and 
wrongs," the perplexities, the strain, the pressure 
from many sides, one learns a broader charity for 
those who falter, and puts a higher estimate upon 
those who never swerve. 

It was a disappointment to us that the labour 
unions were too absorbed in a child labour bill to 
give any attention to the housing bill. I had se- 
cured, through a friend, a resolution from the Na- 
tional Alliance of Labour, endorsing Housing Re- 
form, and hoped that the working men would realise 
that this law was meant to improve their own living 
conditions. But they did not seem to grasp the 
idea, then, very generally, and many of them do not 
now. 



252 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

It is worthy of record here that twice during that 
session I was given the very unusual privilege of open- 
ing the Senate with prayer. This, in itself, is 
enough to show that the evidences of confidence of 
the last session were again renewed. 

There is no need to dwell upon the details of that 
session. Trip after trip I made home, and back 
again, waiting for the bill to come to its third read- 
ing. It was a severe winter. Snow storms delayed 
the trains, and I was sick half the time from ex- 
posure in icy sleepers and from going to and from 
the state house, in sleet or rain. But even when I 
got up out of bed to go, in response to telegrams, the 
family only cheered me on, and helped me to start. 
They knew how much it meant. I remember my 
mother's disgust at the " stupid " men who couldn't 
see the need of a state-wide law. Even the maid was 
glad to contribute her important part, and the chil- 
dren cheerfully volunteered, " We'll pray for the bill 
every night." There was one, too, who was ready to 
pray, pay and fight. Why shouldn't a woman dare, 
with such backing? 

If we could only have fought! But we worked, 
watched and waited, waited in an unending night- 
mare of difficulties and delays. The end of the ses- 
sion was at hand, and our bill had not yet been 




Those who need the bill most cannot come 



I 



DEFEAT 253 

allowed to come to its third reading. Four times it 
had been made a special order, and four times the 
rules had been set aside, and the order broken, on 
the plea of party measures still unattended to. And 
still a poll showed a good majority in favour of the 
bill. 

" I'm tired of this guerilla warfare, this being 
struck in the back by some one hiding in the dark," 
thundered Senator Durre. " I dare you to come out 
and fight in the open, and let the bill go to a vote 
now." 

The last day came, and our friends in the Senate 
rallied for a last charge. Senator Durre fasted that 
day. He made me think of a lion who was being 
made ready for human flesh, as he paced the aisles, 
with his jaw squarely set, and red lightning in his 
eye. 

The panic rush of the last business swept over the 
Senate all day. At the end of the day we got a 
hearing. " Every cause and every interest has had 
its hearing in this Senate," declared Senator Tilden, 
" but the cause of the poor has been pushed off until 
the last hour." 

"It is asked why there are not more here insist- 
ing upon this bill," said Senator Halleck. " Those 
who need the bill most cannot come. They are sick 



254^ BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

and weak, poor and ignorant, and they do not know 
how to protect themselves, and cannot afford to 
come." 

Senator Carleton, our other home senator, pleaded 
eloquently for the children in our cities. There 
seemed at last to be hope of getting a vote — but 
time came for adjournment, and we had to wait till 
the evening session I 

It was the last night, now, and the lion was loose, 
and swept the whole jungle before him. Those who 
heard Senator Durre's ringing, stinging speech still 
remember it. Men said that not in years had such 
oratory been heard in that legislature. 

Can I ever forget that scene! The Senate cham- 
ber was packed with those who were anxious about 
the final fate of different measures. My friends 
pressed to the rail. I saw Mrs. Cox and the chil- 
dren, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, and many others, for the 
Architects' Association had adjourned its session to 
come over and help us. The House finished its busi- 
ness and adjourned, and many of the men came in to 
help in our fight. Everything was confusion. Men 
were tired and excited, and the rules were relaxed. 
The opposing lobby boldly walked the Senate floor, 
and our men called me inside the rail, upon the floor, 
also, with Mr. Cox and the others. 



p 



DEFEAT 255 

After Senator Durre's speech there was a sharp 
skirmish of discussion, and the bill went to a vote. 
How anxiously we counted over our men! Two of 
them were sick, and absent. A few, thinking the 
fight was hopeless, had gone. There were some 
members who had dodged every vote on our bill, and 
they had slipped out into the corridor. One man 
refused to vote at all, because, he said, he had never 
seen a tenement, and wouldn't know one if he saw it, 
and he wasn't going to vote about something that he 
knew nothing about. 

The voting went on. Mr. Cox, with his brows 
bent, was keeping tally. I couldn't ! Thud, thud — 
like clods on my cofBn fell every " no." But " ay, 
ay," — I knew, by the light on the faces of those 
around me, that we had won. Mr. Cox showed me 
the tally — 26 to 16. (There were 50 members, and 
we had to have 26.) There was applause and cheers, 
that the gavel could not quiet. Before it died away 
we had sent a message to the engrossing room to have 
the bill ready for the Governor's signature before 
midnight. 

"But why don't they announce the vote?" we 
asked each other. 

My friends, the senators, who had worked and 
helped, and all the others, crowded around with con- 



256 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

gratulations. " It seems too good to be true," I 
said. "I am afraid to accept congratulations until 
the vote is announced." 

The opposing lobby had gathered in a knot, by 
the desk. We waited an hour, amidst thei confusion 
of the last night, while members were packing up their 
belongings to leave. Finally, there was an uproar. 
A man had been found, by searching the cloak rooms, 
who was willing to change his vote. The majority 
was changed to 25, with 17 opposing, and the bill 
was lost. Lost! 

In our dismay we tried vainly to get another vote 
for our side. Then we asked to see the roll, for 
some one had told us there had been another change, 
in our favour. 

It was gone ! 

There was a murmur of anger and disapproval 
from the audience. Hands beckoned from the rear. 
Suggestions were called to us, in excited voices. 

Too late! No appeal would have been heard, 
while the opposition had such power. The vote had 
been promptly announced, and the Senate adjourned. 

Now there was a different scene. With words and 
looks of sympathy, my friends crowded about. 
Among them were the representatives of all the 
papers, that had given such strong support. " It 
shan't happen again. We won't let it," they said. 



DEFEAT 257 

There was nothing to do but to be game, nothing 
to say but " thank you/' and " good-bye." The 
Coxes took me back to the hotel, with a sympathy 
that spared me words. It was my first defeat, and I 
had not dreamed how bitter it could taste. But 
when dear Mrs. Cox put her motherly arms about 
me, in a close embrace, I felt a sudden release from 
the grip of a hurt too deep for tears. 

It was one o'clock when I crept into bed, faint and 
numb and chilled. But I could not sleep, for every] 
time I shut my eyes I saw those faces I had watched 
so long and so anxiously. I can see them now, some 
with a determined scowl, two with a leering smile of 
triumph, one face aflame, and the others — I saw 
them, for weeks, in the dark. I could see the packed 
room; and over and over again a shuddering seized 
me, at the thought of the public ordeal. Had Lady 
Godiva felt that way? I thought. For the first time 
I wondered if any one were called upon to make that 
extreme sacrifice of one's inmost self. 

At last, weariness overcame me, and I slept a few 
hours. Early in the grey of the morning I left the 
capital, in a drizzling rain, having snatched a bite of 
breakfast at the station lunch counter. 

Seated on the train I opened the morning paper, 
and actually laughed to see the tragic account of our 
fight. " Senator triumphs over frail little woman," 



858 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were the headlines. There was a detailed account 
of the whole thing, giving the vote of the senators, 
and a dramatic story of the disappearance of the 
roll. But there had not been any " glisten of tears '' 
in my eyes, and I want that understood ! 

I smiled again, as I thought of the ultimate effect 
of this defeat upon the housing movement through- 
out the state. Sympathy was strong for us, as the 
paper showed, and I felt that this defeat would give 
just the touch of sympathy and interest the cause 
needed. 

Our women's clubs, too, I felt sure, would resent 
it as the press had done. And the State Board of 
Health would go on with the work, I had good reason 
to believe. After all, too, we still had our law of 
1909, for our two largest cities. Already my " light 
Irish heart " was coming to the top. Ah-h ! " Un- 
der the bludgeonings of chance. My head is bloody 
but unbowed," I repeated to myself with relish, and a 
grim smile. 

But something better than stoicism had been in my 
mind, all the while. It was the thought of the 
" chariots and horsemen of fire " on all the heights 
round about me. I was as sure of them as ever. 

Before the train pulled out of Indianapolis I had 
formulated another plan of campaign for 1913, that 
I felt sure must win. 



DEFEAT ^59 

The miles clicked away. The cab rushed me from 
the station. The family was in the door — four little 
arms were around my neck, and the last of that deep- 
est hurt was gone. 

There isn't much that one's friends can say, after 
a defeat. " But it will come, in the Lord's own time, 
when He is ready,'' some said. 

" No, His time is when we are ready,'' I told them, 
perhaps a little impatiently. 

Just as I had surmised, the press of the state took 
up the cause. None were more gallant than our own 
home papers, and I say it with a deep feeling of 
gratitude. 

Interviewers came from magazines, too, scenting 
a " story " ; though, as we had been defeated, I felt 
there was nothing to tell. They wanted to know, 
too, about the campaign of 1909, but that was all 
over and done with. I was interested in the articles 
that followed, for they all helped the cause along tre- 
mendously, but they always seemed to me like ac- 
counts of some other woman, and I read them withi 
•an odd, impersonal feeling, half wondering what she 
was like. But the stories agreed on two particulars. 
She was " frail " and " persistent." 

And now another force came forward with support 
^— an army with banners, the State Federation of 
Women's Clubs, and at the head of it, Grace Julian 



260 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Clarke. We call her that in Indiana, with pride and 
loving emphasis. Daughter of George Julian, the 
statesman, scholar and orator, she belongs on the 
pedestal which our State accords her. Herself a lec- 
turer and writer, if she were a book it would be a 
classic. 

All this divinity met me several times in the gloomy 
corridors of the state house, and poured ichor into 
my heart, on the days when Saturn warred against 
the Mars and Jupiter and the two blazing suns of 
my horoscope. Now she came with more than ichor. 
The whole Federation was to know about our defeat, 
the leaders had decided, and to resent it properly. 
It was planned that I should speak before them, at 
district conventions and other meetings, throughout 
the state. 

So then, there was another line to add to the in- 
scription upon the " monument to my efforts " in 
the House. The Senate had written upon it: 

" Here lies the Tenement BUly slam 1911/* 

Under this the women of the Federation were to 
write, 

" Awaiting the resurrection.^^ 



CHAPTER X 

THE HOMES OF INDIANA 

It was June when I went to Lake Winona, to speak 
to the Women's Clubs, at a summer session, and there 
the Federation opened its arms to me and took me 
in. The instant I set foot inside their circle I sensed 
something unusual in the atmosphere. It was the 
" federation spirit," a reality and not a name, the 
spirit of unselfish love and interest in each other, 
and it radiated and kindled all about me. I could 
never tell them all their cordial welcome meant to 
me, but I felt like one who had been struggling up a 
steep mountain path, battling with a heavy snow 
storm, and who came, cold and weary, to a place 
where there was warmth, food, shelter and friends. 
True, I had warm friends and strong helpers, here 
and there, over the state, but our forces were scat- 
tered, some too far to help. Here was a united 
body, perfectly organised. " Federation " — there is 
strength in the very name. 
I I had never had time to be a club woman, and this 
I first close view of them was a revelation. Where 
' were the club women I had read about, whose pro- 

j grammes skipped from Applique to Xingu.? Here 

^61 



262 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were practical women, telling what their clubs had 
done that year in the way of study and civic work. 
Here were mingled farmers' wives, women of wealth, 
women who worked for a living, college women, and 
women who had come into the clubs for the very pur- 
pose of getting educational advantages they had been 
denied. Each one could teach the others out of her 
own experience, and their range was deep and wide. 

I was much impressed by the conduct of the ses- 
sions. Here I saw a dignified body, ruled with a 
parliamentary precision which any legislature might 

envy. 

It impressed me forcibly that the thought of the 
session pervaded the whole day. At meal time little 
earnest groups gathered to discuss special problems, 
and, passing the tables, one heard " factory inspec- 
tion," " municipal committee,'' etc. Not one word 
of small talk or chatter did I hear. 

Sitting near the front, at the first session, I turned 
to a quiet little woman beside me, asking, " Tell me 
who all these women are, and what they have done." 
She began with pride to tell of all those who were 
prominent in the National Federation. There was 
Grace Julian Clarke, the president of the Indiana 
Federation. The lady presiding, Mrs. Edwin Knapp, 
was one of the leading spirits of our federation. 
There was Mrs. Melville Johnston, chairman of the 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 263 

Art Committee of the National Federation; Mrs. 
Kinsey, one of our pioneer club women. 

But who was this, just come to the platform? A 
bright, eager little woman, whose voice rang clear 
and strong, and whose presence radiated energy? 
Every one roused. It seemed as if suddenly more 
windows had been let into the room, and a fresh west- 
ern breeze were blowing through. 

" That is Mrs. Olaf Guldlin," I was told. At that 
time she was chairman of the Home Economics Com- 
mittee of the National Federation, and was known 
all over the United States for the important work 
she had done in putting Home Economics into schools 
as well as clubs. 

After her came Miss Vida Newsom, with an account 
of the playground work she was doing; and then 
Mrs. W. J. Rickey, with a scholarly talk on eugenics. 

As one by one the different clubs contributed their 
part to the discussion, it seemed to me as if chord 
after chord had been struck upon a great harp, whose 
golden strings were all attuned. It was a clear, high 
strain, of noble harmonies. 

And then I spoke, and twanged a harsh, deep 
chord, that gave a new note they had never heard 
before. Although the Federation had studied social 
and industrial conditions, as allied to child labour 
and the work of women, and had gone conscientiously 



a64 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

into these movements, they had not yet turned their 
gaze upon the hovels and tenements where so many 
of these working women and children live. I told 
them " A Tale of the Tenements," a true and simple 
story of life in the slums of our Indiana towns, and 
made it just as bare and sordid and miserable as I 
found it, in plain speech, for there was no need for 
eloquence. They could see, those clear-eyed women, 
that not education, not culture, not music or art, not 
even home economics, could ever penetrate to those 
darkened places, where cleanliness was difficult, and 
sanitation was impossible, where decency was often 
barred, and life was too frequently bestial. They 
grasped at once the lesson in " race solidarity," the 
danger to their own children in the schools, the neu- 
tralising of the best endeavours of their clubs, in 
civic work, by the demoralising influence of those 
classes to whom their culture could never "filter 
down." They had gone to great lengths and ample 
breadths of endeavour; now they were ready to go 
to the depths, in a massive effort for human- 
ity. 

I had noticed that the home and the child were 
the two great themes about which most of their 
thought centred. The contrast of their homes and 
their children with the unsanctified " homes " of the 
slums and the children of the poor was more than 




DEFENDERS OF THE HOMES OF IXDIANx\ 



Grace Julian Clarke 

Dr. J. N. Hurty, 
Becy. Indiana State Boai^d 
of Health 



Senator Charles B. 
Clarke 

Senator Edward Durre 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 265 

their mother hearts could bear, and they sat hushed 
for a moment, when I closed. 

I remember then with what quiet dignity Mrs. 
Knapp arose, and with one skilful touch swept the 
golden harp so that it seemed as if one great chord 
— now with its lowest note vibrating — shook the 
room, as the women rose and pledged support to the 
housing movement. 

I wish I might linger on those radiant June days, 
full of colour and beauty, when a circlet of friend- 
ships was formed that holds my life now in its clasp. 
But another experience was waiting for me, among 
those hills, that demands its place in this story. 

The State Bar Association was in session there 
at the same time, and my good friends in that associ- 
ation had planned that I should address their con- 
vention on the subject of the housing law. Of 
course, nothing could be more opportune, and I was 
glad, for I felt it would mean much to the cause. 
But to think of making an extemporaneous address 
to such a body, and on law! 

It gave me confidence to be escorted to the plat- 
form and introduced by my dear friend, Judge Timo- 
thy E. Howard, who is one of our ex-judges of the 
Supreme Court, and revered throughout the state. 
But I must confess that, as I stood upon the plat- 
form, and looked down into the grave and expectant 



266 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

faces of our supreme judges, ex-attorney generals, 
and others of our brilliant and distinguished members 
of the state bar, for a moment my breath deserted me, 
and only the presence of my friend, and his belief 
in my ability, gave me courage to proceed. 

It was a brief and simple talk, but however it 
lacked it was earnest, I hope it sounded better 
than it read from the uncorrected notes of the re- 
porter. 

Those experiences at Winona were the first of a 
long series of lecture tours. During the summer 
and early fall I spoke to quite a number of federated 
clubs. With characteristic energy and thoroughness 
the leaders of the Federation opened the way for me 
to bring the matter of housing reform to all the 
women of the state, and plans were made, also, for 
special lectures, along the line of my travel, in 
churches, to charity circles, etc. 

Whenever it was possible, in the cities I visited, 
we took a party through the alleys and up over 
the business blocks, where we found many surprising 
revelations. 

Traversing the length and breadth of the state, in 
every direction, going from my own home and the 
homes of my new friends out among the homes of the 
poor in Indiana, I saw so much of the contrast that 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 267 

it was burned in upon my heart and brain. " The 
Homes of Indiana " came to have a very different 
meaning to me from what it had in other years, very 
different from the meaning it seems to have to most 
people. 

" The Homes of Indiana '' — at the words a vision 
rises of the old homestead, with its fireside circle, and 
all the haunts of childhood. To some, it is a man- 
sion with stately pillars, to some a cottage with low 
eaves against whose panes brush whispering apple 
boughs. Or it may have been a rambling farm house, 
with " the orchard, the meadow," the great lilacs by 
the gate. All of these rise to my mind, in a glow- 
ing picture, with a throb of pride, whenever those 
magic words are spoken. But after it comes a pang 
of shame, for always now I see the dark border of the 
picture — those other " Homes of Indiana '' that are 
not worthy the name — the hovels and dens and tene- 
ments ! 

I remember the trip that burned these words upon 
my mind, with all their breadth of meaning. Trav- 
elling to Chicago, and thence out across the state, 
I passed through our picturesque wooded hill country, 
on through rich rolling farm lands, to the level 
prairies of the north, thence across wastes of sand, 
along miles of marshes, stopping here and there at 
various towns. 



4a- 



268 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

There is a fascination about the dissolving views 
from the car window, for the human element of the 
landscape gives it a mysterious interest. Those 
country lanes that turn in at a big gate, and wind 
back to the clustering elms — one wonders where 
they lead; or, catching sight of dormer windows 
among the trees, wonders about those who live within. 
Many a grey old sloping roof tree and great chim- 
ney I passed, showing through the orchard vistas, 
with big red barns and full granaries near by. Many 
a quiet village I went through, with neat white cot- 
tages on shady streets, and wide lawns bright with 
jflowers. I was fain to rest my eyes with them, after 
the sordid sights I had looked upon. 

Here and there, on my journey, were proudly 
pointed out to me the places where our great men 
were born. One looks instinctively to see what as- 
sociations had their share in nurturing their nobility, 
especially as our heroes love to dwell upon their early 
scenes, and the lessons of living truth instilled at a 
sainted mother's knee. It came over me with new 
force that every one of our statesmen, our orators 
and authors, had the springs of his greatness in one 
of these Homes of Indiana ! 

Sometimes, across the hills, we saw the outlines of 
the county almshouses. That fleeting view gave no 
more adequate conception of them or their inmates 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 269 

than is given by the fleeting thought that is all so 
many people take of them. I thought of our ninety- 
two counties, with their almshouses, and of all the 
outcast life that has found shelter within their walls ! 
An overwhelming realisation pressed upon me of the 
homes from which those inmates came! And how 
many from those homes had gone to other asylums, 
for defectives or insane, how many almost as de- 
fective or wretched remained within those homes ! 
It was a stupendous thought, of those thousands 
upon thousands of our state's unfortunates, and 
needed only one more picture to make it complete — 
the reform schools and prisons, with their sad quota. 
And now I came in sight of the grey walls and towers 
of the penitentiary, at Michigan City. 

I spent the night within the prison grounds, in the 
home of the deputy warden. Dr. Milligan, where I 
learned much that I needed to know. We went 
through the prison, next day, and I could but won- 
der about the men, from different walks of life, and 
some, of course, who began their career in other 
states. But here were all these convicts who were 
the product of our own state! We talked about 
early environment, and how it showed in them. " Al- 
most every case of criminal assault committed to this 
prison can be traced to the herding together of 
families," I was told. 



270 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Here was the last dark scene. I wondered how 
many of those men who looked, with a set and hope- 
less gaze through the iron bars, upon a blighted fu- 
ture, could look also upon a blackened past, and trace 
back their path, step by step, from that prison door 
to one of the " Homes of Indiana," such a home as 
I had too often seen, where as children they had 
learned all that was low and base and evil ! 

This was the story I told to the clubs and circles 
in the towns I visited, trying to give each local prob- 
lem its individual attention. It happened that some 
of the club members lived in those quaint old sleepy 
towns in our state that are as beautiful as bits of 
Arcady. There the grass grows in the streets, and 
the town clock shows no flight of time. There gener- 
ations have lived in the same old homesteads, and died 
in the same old bedsteads. It seemed almost cruel to 
wound those gentle hearts with the story I had to 
bring, but they wanted to know of life in the world 
outside, like ladies of old to whom the travel-stained 
troubadours sang, in castle towers. And they had 
to know, so that their representative should be in- 
structed how to vote properly, at the next legis- 
lature. 

There were other lovely old towns, where the stir- 
ring pulse of new life was quickening, and where the 
citizens proudly showed new houses going up, as signs 




oi] 



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O 
O 



o 






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c5 






THE HOMES OF INDIANA 271 

of growth. I had to call their attention to the 
fringe of miserable dwellings, where the colony of 
poor was steadily increasing, and point out the old 
homesteads that had gone to wreck, with Jacob Riis's 
warning, " Head off the slums ! " It is hard to make 
people believe in danger, until calamity is too near 
to avert. But I wanted to cry out when I saw how 
speculators were invading the quiet streets, slicing 
off the lovely lawns, hacking down the noble old 
trees, putting ugly, cheap-looking flats uncomfort- 
ably close to some of the dignified old mansions, that 
seemed to be holding up their grey eyebrows in mute 
protest. 

The owners needed the price, and took it, but they 
abandoned their lawns and sat inside, and went 
oftener to the suburbs, where, of course, they will 
eventually move, for privacy, light and air. Then, 
as happens in all of our cities, the old house, left 
to unloving hands, will become less and less desirable, 
go from shabbiness to decay, and finally be the rook- 
ery for many low and noisy families. Then there 
will be frowsy women in the doors, dirty babies on the 
steps and the pavement. The lawn will be trampled, 
the great hall door will stand open, the bare floors 
echo to rough feet, the lofty walls, the marble 
hearths, wiU be blackened, defiled. Those rooms, 
made sacred by every ceremony, will be the scene of 



27a BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

unholy life, and drunken, boisterous mirth or strife. 
There is no sadder sight than the old home, gone to 
such ruin. 

Passing on to the younger, rapidly growing towns 
of the north was like coming to a different country. 
Here was the hustle and push of frontier life. Here 
one was confronted with the problems — harder be- 
cause unrecognised — of the growing city and the 
unannexed suburb. In some of the towns the loyalty 
of the " boosters '' went to extremes, and they would 
admit nothing short of perfection within their city 
limits. They viewed with complacency the lawless 
mongrel populace, living in " tar paper " shacks, 
tents, or other makeshift dwellings that crowded 
about them on all sides, even to the doorsteps of the 
town. Their filth and degradation was not their 
responsibility. " You won't find anything like that 
in New^dlle proper,^^ they declared with pride. 
^^ This town is under the strictest regulations." 

" But," we suggested, " unless you make a walled 
city of Newville proper, and guard its gates, New- 
ville Improper will swarm into your nice, well regu- 
lated town, with rags and tatters and pollution. All 
your ideal regulations will not keep them from doing 
outside the things you don't allow within. All that 
you can do is to extend your limits and take them 
in, as a father takes in the son who has married a 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 273 

barmaid, and disgraced the family ; for they are kin, 
in spite of you. But whether you annex them and 
regulate them, or not, they are there ; the flies from 
their filth visit your table, or your grocer and 
butcher; the people of the suburbs throng your 
streets, and brush against you in the stores and cars. 
Their dirty dollars circulate in Newville. Their peo- 
ple move into Newville, and become your citizens. A 
pestilence in their borders would sweep your town. 
A fire in their tenements would scorch your houses. 
And, even now, you are entertaining part of these 
people in your jail." 

But they maintained at least the feeling of iso- 
lation. " Insulation," perhaps, is a better term. 

Coming out from Chicago, along our lake front, 

any Hoosier who loves his State has many unhappy 

thoughts — if he thinks. That part of Indiana 

, which needs our tenement law worst is in Chicago. 

; Or, it might be said that that part of Chicago that 

needs their tenement law most is in Indiana. It is 

I also the part that resents any tenement law most 

I vigorously. It is not resented by the Slavs, Poles, 

I Hungarians, and the rest of the twenty-seven na- 

j tionalities who are snarled all together there with 

1 their cows, horses, dogs, pigs, goats, geese, chickens 

i and children, but the men who own the unsanitary 

', coops and barracks they live in. ^' The tenement 



274 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

law is framed to ruin business," they say, vowing 
vengeance upon it. Some day the children who live 
there will rise up and curse those men and the black 
business that has ruined them. 

All through that section we find many such prop- 
erty owners. Happily for the future of those towns, 
the club women are among the most alert in our state, 
and feel the heavy weight of civic responsibility, the 
dangers of the elements that crowd into the frontier, 
as well as being awake to the possibihties of the 
growing towns. I did not find anywhere more pub- 
lic spirited women, or any who realised more keenly 
what both the school and the home mean to society. 

After having been called rudely and vehemently 
to terms by the enemies of the tenement law, in that 
section, I was deeply appreciative of the assurances 
of help of some of their most substantial business 
men. One of these, in Gary, said, " I wish the tene- 
ment law were ten times stronger — so strong that 
it would be impossible to ever build another tene- 
ment." 

All the way out, through East Chicago, and the 
crowded section along the railroads, I thought of 
what the English and German laws would do with 
such districts, by means of expropriating and mak- 
ing over generally. I longed to be, for a moment, 
a benignant cyclone, to gently lift all those houses 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 275 

off of their bases, and set them carefully down upon 
a green field, far enough apart. But it would be 
necessary to blow the owners, and all those responsi- 
ble for those conditions, considerably farther, or they 
would be right back, and have things as bad as ever, 
in a short time. 

Few things are more depressing than riding out 
through the back yards of Chicago, into Indiana. 
How endless seems the line of wooden porches, with 
wooden stairways zig-zagging between the stories, 
festooned with dismal washings and dirty bedding, 
garnished with all the dingy domestic overflow, from 
pails to perambulators! 

Thinking of the deadening effect of the outlook 
in the worst places, I remembered how Byron sang of 
those mountains above Marathon, Marathon that 
" looks on the sea " : 

"Musing there an hour alone, 
I dreamed that Greece might still be free." 

Could he ever have had such dreams of Freedom 
if, instead, he had been looking out over this hope- 
less sea, or shut up with a whole family in one of 
these tenement rooms, gazing down an airshaft? 

Speeding along, I noticed the narrow slits of space 
between the houses, and gave a gasp when we came 
to an open space at the edge of the city. There 



276 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were a few empty fields, then others, just as raw, that 
had rows of houses marching across them, houses 
jammed as closely together as any in the heart of 
the city ! More fields, more blocks — I found I was 
holding my breath between spaces. At last we had 
passed out into Indiana, and the settlements came 
so fast that they seemed to merge. Some day they 
will all run together, in one great sore — one mon- 
ster city. There is not one that has anything typical 
of Indiana about it; they are all alien. In fact, I 
do not know of anything else in Indiana like these 
towns, a certain element of which clamours to fasten 
their very worst building standards upon the rest 
of our Indiana cities. The buildings are unlike any 
of our types, most of them being of the ugly, square- 
jawed, crop-eared, bull dog type, built to save space, 
that one finds in the great cities. 

Everywhere are the great black throats of the 
steel mills, with their heavy smoke. All along the 
great sweep of the lake front is the crude clutter and 
muss of new building, the trash and litter of traffic, 
rails, iron, lumber, coal, cinders, — the ugliness by 
which the hand of man defaces the countenance of 
Nature. Everywhere one sees the enormous enter- 
prise, the giant industries, to describe which many 
writers have sacked the dictionary for words big 
enough. And they are enormous — stupendous — 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 277 

bigger, in their ultimate effects, their far reaching 
grip upon human fates, than even the minds that 
planned them dreamed, or they would have planned 
more generously! 

Those men who summoned the first workmen to 
that district were like the man who let the genie out 
of the bottle, and could not conjure him in again. 
The stream of immigrants began to flow, in answer 
to the first demand, it has kept on flowing, ever since, 
just as water continues to run from a siphon, once 
the stream is started. Another stream began to 
pour in, — speculators! There is no need to ex- 
plain why honest enterprise is always shadowed by 
adventurers. '^Wherever the carcass is,'' there will 
the vultures be. It is a pity for the immigrants 
that the vultures overtook them even on the way to 
their destination. It is a pity for the cities that 
two such strong torrents are sweeping in upon them, 
and washing out the lines of the Plan ; one stream, 
those who are weak, helpless, ignorant of civic wel- 
fare; the other stream, avaricious, strong, regard- 
less of civic welfare. 

The instincts of the Housing Reformer centred 
my interest on these two classes. I saw how specu- 
lation had forced up property values, and what an 
unusual percentage lots were expected to yield, so 
that the grains of sand were grudged for gold, and 



278 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the 25-foot lots were forced to carry tenements 
housing enormous numbers. " The beggar is taxed 
for a corner to die in/' here. We found speculators 
building flimsy flats two squares from the main street, 
and crowding them full of foreigners, from cellar to 
garret ; building rear tenements in behind, and charg- 
ing high rents everywhere. We found newcomers in 
the tar-paper shacks, better ofF in many ways than 
the established workmen, who lived in the barracks, 
and had two rooms, in one of which the father, mother 
and little ones slept, in the other of which slept men 
boarders, also the older boys and girls. VV^e saw 
negroes and foreigners in the same house, for the 
latter do not understand our instinct of segregation. 
In all of these towns we have the complex problem 
of the alien, living in a strange environment, mixed 
with native poor and negroes. The results of this 
promiscuity were dwelt upon by the probation offi- 
cer of Lake County, Miss Edna Hatfield, who had 
special college training for her work. She speaks 
of the "homing" instinct of these foreigners, and 
the sacrifices they make to own a home. One of 
these, the taking in of boarders for whom their wives 
cook and wash, too often undoes the home, as Miss 
Hatfield showed, and is a great menace to morality. 
Some of the children hardly knew who were their own 
fathers. 



THE HOMESOF INDIANA 279 

Except within certain limits, the water supply is 
not adequate, and very often it is an out-door hy- 
drant, that freezes in winter. The sand is trusted 
to do sewer service, and the semi-public outhouses are 
a menace both to health and morals. The unplas- 
tered houses are cold in winter, so cold that Miss 
Hatfield declared a bath was a serious thing for the 
children, in severe weather, so it is not surprising if 
filth adds its victims to the infant mortality list. 

The high rents, the overcrowding, the misery and 
squalor of the foreigners, was told by Miss Hatfield, 
in many pathetic stories of children that had come to 
her notice in the police court. She told many more 
tales of the sturdy immigrant traits, whose conser- 
vation would mean so much to our American citizen- 
ship, and made a strong plea that the immigrants 
should be provided with cheap, good homes, homes 
that they could buy and pay for. 

With the 65 per cent, foreign population in Lake 
County, we may well consider the menace of unsafe- 
guarded health and morals, in crowded homes. The 
immigrants' side of it appeals to us strongly. How 
dreary the crude new surroundings must seem to 
them, homesick for their own people, their bit of 
garden, the old-country verdure! How they must 
miss the picturesque village life, the festivals, the 
folk dances! 



280 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

^* We have no land, only sand," one of the citizens 
told us. Every teaspoonful of earth has to be 
brought from the swamps, at $4.00 a load, we were 
told. Only sand burrs grow about the shacks, not 
one blade of green. 

"Only sand"! There is plenty of that. Yet it 
is staked off, in 25-foot lots, all the way out, across 
Indiana, for an indefinite distance. There are no 
such physical or moral problems, anywhere else in 
Indiana. Nowhere else such inpouring streams of 
humanity, such crowding, such imminent land con- 
gestion. They are baffling, overpowering ! 

I stood on the shore of the great lake, upon whose 
sands the human breakers beat as ceaselessly as do 
its surges. A few years ago there was only the waste 
of waters here, calling to the wastes of sand. " The 
waste places " had a new meaning now. What were 
these dreary dunes, compared to the wasted hearts 
of our cities, the older ones blackened by decay, 
ruined by abandonment; the newer ones, wasted by 
the neglect of opportunities to do splendid things, 
the choice of doing little and sordid things.?^ And 
what was the civil engineering done here, compared 
with the human engineering needed? 

Wonderful things have been done in this section, 
in reclaiming marshes, making roads, bridges, build- 
ings — those things that the strong hand of man is 













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to 



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CJ 



I 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 281 

trained to do. There are many other things to be 
done, that Indiana calls upon the men who first 
claimed these wastes to come back and finish. 

But — we can drain the marshes and level the 
dunes. Can we ever drain these marshes of misery, 
and level the barriers to the race? 

It was with a heavy heart that I turned away, to 
go on towards the cities of a difi*erent day. And 
the story that I had to tell the clubs was hard to 
put into one lecture, for it was like condensing all 
of Salt Lake into one tabloid. It choked me, and 
sometimes it did them. 

In October the Federation convened at its annual 
session, and I had a chance to see it in its full glory. 
If I had needed any proof that the club women of 
the romancers was either a myth, or long ago ex- 
tinct, I would have had it in the reports that showed 
what each club had done through the year. I sat 
and listened with deep interest as the thirteen dis- 
tricts gave their statements, and these are some of the 
things they reported: 

A " Swat the fly '* campaign. 

Red Cross stamp sales. 

Social centres established. 

Rest rooms opened for working girls. 

School gardens. 

Fight for pure water supply. 



282 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Clean up days. 

Special course of Home Economics lectures. 

Establishment of parent-teachers' clubs. 

Home gardens. 

One district reported a civic department which had 
a municipal committee whose duty it was to formu- 
late and push the passage of needed ordinances. The 
committee had been looking after public sanitation, 
the beautifying of the river bank, and the care of the 
city garbage. 

After these reports came others, telling of the 
progress of child labour work, which had engrossed 
the Federation that year. Then a committee on 
forestry and waterways reported. 

These stories about the impractical club women 
must have been started years ago, in the first callow 
beginnings of women's clubs, I thought, and said as 
much to a neighbour. She was an Indianapolis 
woman, and for answer she handed me a register of 
the Indianapolis Woman's Club beginning with 1875. 
Glancing through it with curious interest I found 
that the first topic on its first programme was : " In 
order to be good housekeepers, is it necessary to de- 
vote one's entire time to the work? " Its second 
programme took up " Woman's relation to man." 
By '76 they were studying the banking system, and 
had a lecture from Mary Livermore on " Superfluous 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 283 

Women.'' Their programmes went on, taking up 
history, philosophy, literature, religion and archi- 
tecture, till '79 brought them to the consideration of 
'' Legislation on Public Order and Municipal Gov- 
ernment," also " The Kindergarten Theory." " Free 
Trade," and " The Charities of To-day " followed. 
In 1889 " Service " came into the club thought, with 
Bishop Faber's words, " The great fact is, that life 
is a service ; the only question is, whom will we serve? " 

In '92 "Outdoor Relief" and "The Children of 
our State," were considered. 

I closed the book with deep thoughts on those 
women of an earlier day. And now my neighbour, 
seeing the impression made upon me by this review, 
pressed upon me a fat volume of the history of the 
General Federation. It was overwhelming. It is a 
big thought, even, of the 16,000 women in our Indi- 
ana Federation. But to think of one million club 
women, doing, thinking, working out all the things 
their programmes designate! It is stupendous. I 
looked again, with new interest, at our leaders on 
the platform, who were prominent in this giant organ- 
isation, and wondered about all the grist its great 
wheels were turning to grind; and then my thoughts 
came back to our own organisation. 

Listening to the various reports, I had been im- 
pressed by the fact that our Federation was a glori- 



284 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

fied " machine," second in efficiency to none in the 
state. Taking our thirteen political districts, each 
district had its corresponding women's organisation, 
its chairman and committees, all working with the 
precision of clockwork, and animated, not by parti- 
sanship, not by any selfish motives, but by love of 
humanity and a deep desire for the welfare of the 
whole state. And it was composed of women who 
represent not only the intelligence and culture but 
the social forces of each community. I wondered if 
they were fully aware of their power, even after I had 
been told of the movements they had been pro- 
moting. 

Any one who strayed into that convention hall 
would have had to listen attentively to discover 
whether it was a child labour meeting, a conservation 
conference, or a congress of mothers. In fact, it 
was the vital forces of all these interests, federated. 
It seemed therefore perfectly fitting to me, and to 
them, that, after I had told them the story of the 
defeat of the tenement law that year, I should pro- 
pose as their slogan, ** The Homes of Indiana,'' and 
that they should accept it, and pledge the whole 
Federation to Housing Reform. I asked it of them, 
*^ Because whatever is a menace to the poorest home 
is a menace to our own ; for the sake of all who live 
in mansions, cottages, farm houses, tenements, or 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 285 

hovels; that all the Homes of Indiana may be safe- 
guarded." 

Not only did the Federation take up Housing Re- 
form, as a whole body, but it created a housing com- 
mittee, and made me its chairman. It became my 
part, thereafter, to explain the need and nature of 
housing reform to the clubs of the state. And so, 
up and down, from the Ohio to the great lake I went, 
and back and forth across our state, telling the story 
of " The Homes of Indiana." I tried to show them 
how impossible real home life is in thousands of 
Indiana " homes " ; to show the relation of the house 
to the home, of the home to the child. They needed 
no urging, these women of the Federation, to make 
them take up the cause of those other women, who 
had no voice, who were too weak and ignorant to 
plead for themselves, or to know how to better their 
conditions. 

Before I started off on a tour, I went again to the 
homes of the poor, to burn within my mind a more 
vivid image of their wretchedness, to get the figures 
of their enormous rentals, and to rouse afresh the 
anger that blazed within me, that I might kindle it 
in others. On many of my trips I had the company 
of the president of the Federation, as her duties 
called her to most of the meetings. First this was 
Mrs. Clarke, and later, Mrs. Felix T. McWhirter, 



286 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the wife of an Indianapolis banker, and one of the 
noblest Christian women in our state. Both en- 
tered heartily into my work, and gave it emphasis 
before the Federation, in every possible way. 

In such company I soon saw what it meant to be 
president of our Federation, and enjoyed their 
honours with them. I must say that the care taken 
of us has spoiled me for the ordinary lecture field, 
with its uncertainties. In the larger cities a limou- 
sine was waiting for us at the station, and the club 
woman who had the most palatial home took the 
part of our hostess. There were beautiful club 
luncheons and dinners, the mere memory of which will 
refresh any famishing desert that life may hold for 
me. At the smaller towns we were met by an auto, 
or, in some places, a sleek country horse and car- 
riage, that conveyed us to the softest bed, the most 
bountiful fare, and the warmest hearts that could be 
found. 

And so from club to club we went, from home to 
home. 

Only those who are within the charmed circle can 
know what this means ; the rapid change from one to 
the other, with the instantaneous electrical connec- 
tion which puts us in the vital current, so that we 
are at one with all their plans and experiences. It 
was a transfusion of life, to receive the sympathy, to 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 287 

feel the energy, of these women. And we were more 
than guests of honour — we were guests of love. 

It was most interesting to study the different 
groups of women, and to see what their club life 
meant to them. It meant occupation and new inter- 
ests to the women of leisure. It meant rest and re- 
freshing to the busy women. The most noticeable 
result of all was in the spirit of the women — a spirit 
of optimism and achievement, of ever renewed and 
vigorous purpose, which I believe does more to coun- 
teract age and illness than any force of the times, 
except religion. But the greatest thing was not the 
spirit, nor the work. " It is the women themselves, 
after all," as Mrs. Clarke says. 

It was inspiring to see how instantly they took 
up the thought I brought them. I am sure that if 
their homes and their children had not been the cen- 
tre of their thoughts they would not have been so 
quickly aroused by the story of the homes and the 
children of the poor. And if they had been organ- 
ised only for the purpose of self improvement they 
would not have felt their responsibility so keenly. 
It was a sad business, though, to go about the 
state, thrusting thorns into tender hearts. " No 
one can look at me without thinking of slums," I 
told them, " and I almost feel as if my name is Bill, 
from the constant references to it." 



288 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

I envied the lecturers who could talk all the time 
(about pretty things, and hated the reek and ruin of 
the slums, more than ever. But the truth had to be 
told. And here was such an opportunity. I might 
never see this audience again. They must know and 
care. 

If only one could have a cast iron body and a 
vulcanised larynx ! I heard with amazement the feats 
of endurance of my club sisters, who toured our state 
and other states with vigour unabated. I had come 
to the place where the range of five or six cities laid 
me low, at the seventh I was asleep on my feet, and 
at the eighth I was speechless from exhaustion. 

There is something weird about the effect of turn- 
ing over to one's subconscious mind the responsibility 
for a speech, and hearing one's own voice (sounding 
strangely far-off) go on and on, saying things that 
both entertain and surprise one. And, at the close, 
to have a friend say, " That's the best speech you 
ever made," gives food for thought. When I had 
to pinch my arms to keep alert, and had a strong 
desire to lay my head on the pulpit cushion (when I 
spoke in churches) I knew the danger line was near. 

In one city, where I stopped at a hotel, after meet- 
ings, discussions, conferences, luncheons, callers, and 
reporters, I went to the hotel desk to give my key 
to the clerk. His amazed smile made me aware that 



THE HOMES OF INDIANA 289 

I had given him my watch, which was in my other 
hand. 

At the end of one tour an invitation was brought 
to me from the Chamber of Commerce of South Bend, 
to come over next day and speak. I arrived on the 
interurban, in the midst of a blinding snow storm, 
just a few minutes before the time of the meeting. 
Miss Rein, who had charge of the Charities there, 
met me and went with me to the Oliver. Waiting in 
the parlours with her for the committee of men who 
.were to receive me, I remember trying in vain to 
write a few notes for my talk, and controlling an 
almost overwhelming desire to stretch out upon the 
green velvet davenport for a little nap. But I roused 
to speak to the committee, and later the snow in my 
face set my blood a-tingle. A good audience of civic 
and charity workers awaited me, as well as many of 
the Chamber of Commerce. And there was my 
friend. Judge Howard, the president, ready to help 
and encourage. That meeting was worth the whole 
trip, for, as a result, the board of directors of the 
Chamber pledged themselves to the state-wide hous- 
ing movement. 

It seemed to me as if, with the 16,000 women of the 

Federation added to all the forces we had already en- 

j listed, we must sweep everything before us at the 

(next legislature. But I could never forget my ex- 



i 



290 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

periences of that last winter. Always, in the midst 
of the most brilliant occasions, Browning's lines 
would come to me : " It was roses, roses, all the 
way,'' and I thought how " The Patriot " had trav- 
elled that same road, a year later, in the executioner's 
cart. 

And the Legislature was coming nearer and nearer ! 

I looked across the year, that stretched like the 
great circle of a race track before me, to January, 
1913, and dreaded it. 



CHAPTER XI 

VICTORY 

Across the State of Indiana we went, in OctolDer, to 
beautiful Fort Wayne. Through woods that were 
aflame with scarlet and crimson we passed, through 
orchards hung with rubies. The russet fields on 
either side were heaped with gold, where piles of 
pumpkins lay. And there, among them, stood the 
shocks of corn, like folded palms upraised, praising 
the God of Plenty. All day we rode in a trail of 
glory that lifted from my heart, for a time, the 
shadow of the cities where little children live. It 
was for the purpose of laying that shadow upon 
other hearts that I was going to Fort Wayne, to 
make a final appeal for help to the State Federation 
of Women's Clubs, before the legislature met. 

The city was on a holiday to meet the brilliant 
gathering of women who came from all comers of 
the state. Every form of intellectual and social 
entertainment was provided, and all prepared to make 
the most of every happy moment. But who could 
dance with a ball and chain fastened to one's ankle? 
The responsibility of that last chance of appeal fas- 
tened me down in just that fashion. 



293 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

At other times, in free moments, I would have 
found all their talk on music, literature and art most 
interesting, but now it fell upon me like a shower of 
rose leaves. Even the great movements of the clubs, 
to which I had always given earnest thought, failed 
to hold me. " But these things will keep ; they don't 
require legislation, and you can always do them," I 
pleaded. " The legislature meets in a few months, 
and if we fail to pass the tenement law we may 
never get it." 

Dear Mrs. McWhirter! I shall always love her 
for the way she understood. " This is our one big 
fight for this year," she declared, and threw all her 
strength and influence into it, arranging that " The 
Homes of Indiana " should have a place on all pro- 
grammes where she appeared. All the leaders of the 
Federation were most generous in regard to this 
movement. A number of them even wanted to pass 
resolutions condemning, by name, the men who were 
responsible for our defeat in 1911. " But wait, and 
let us see what happens," I said. '^ I believe some of 
them will change their minds, and see how badly 
housing reform is needed, and will be convinced that 
the bill is fair." 

October was the end of the Federation year, and 
chairmen of committees were laying down their tasks. 



VICTORY 293 

for others to take up. But my work lapped on 
around the year. I would stiU be on that race-course 
in March. No rest till then. This was only a 
breathing space. I drew some big deep breaths in 
the home of the Guldlins, who entertained me, for 
their views were as broad as their grounds. People 
who live in a park, and give gardens and play- 
grounds to their city, can be expected to put a high 
estimate on sunlight and air, space, outlook and 
beauty. But not all of these, having such things, are 
willing to turn back to the consideration of slums, 
with their filth and ugliness. These good friends 
were, and, to crown all, Mrs. Guldlin, who was a na- 
tional authority on Home Economics, agreed with me 
that Housing Reform is a vital and fundamental 
part thereof. With characteristic energy she took 
up the housing work of her city, and joined in the 
state-wide movement. 

This visit gave a coveted opportunity to call upon 
the dear old mother of one of our legislators. She 

( was a noble lady, widely known for her good works, 
and I was delighted to find that she regarded the 

1 needs of the poor just as I did, and promised to do 

' all she could for the tenement bill. 

Looking back over the months previous to this 
meeting, it is wonderful to see how sentiment had 

j grown for the housing movement, through the in- 



294 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

terest of the Federation women. Such was the char- 
acter of these women that their endorsement made 
housing reform not only popular but fashionable, 
all over Indiana. In Mishawaka, Indianapolis, and 
some other cities, the Woman's Club numbered sev- 
eral hundred; in many towns they numbered fifty 
or seventy-five; some towns had a dozen or more 
clubs ; and these were all political factors of decided 
importance. Not only were the members' husbands 
men of prominence, but the women themselves were 
influential in their communities. 

One shrinks from making use of one's friendships, 
or from making political capital of honours gra- 
ciously bestowed; but, inasmuch as they were given 
for the purpose of helping our cause, it is only fair 
to acknowledge how well they served. 

During this time another organisation had been 
formed, that took in the men who wanted to help 
with the housing movement, as well as women. It 
was the Indiana Housing Association, the first state 
association for that work in the country. Mr. Alex- 
ander Johnson came over from his country place in 
Angola to preside at the organising, and we put him 
.at the head of our advisory committee. Mr. Cox, 
of course, was elected president, and I was made 
secretary, thereby giving us official responsibility for 
the work we had been doing hitherto. Just to look 



VICTORY 295 

at the printed list of our officers and committees gives 
me courage. Among them are Hon. William L. Tay- 
lor, Judge Howard, Dr. Hurty and Mr. Amos But- 
ler. 

And there is Dr. U. G. Weatherly, of our Indiana 
University, who took a class of students over to 
Indianapolis, and directed a housing survey of three 
districts of the city — in which class it is safe to 
say there will be no future slum landlords. We have, 
too, some of our leading club women, some architects, 
and one of the largest real estate men in Indiana. 

We had all our charities secretaries in the asso- 
ciation at the start. As poverty doctors they were 
indispensable, for they knew more of the actual needs 
of the poor than any one else. Some of them were 
located in towns where the poor were regarded much 
as a colony of lepers would be. The public gave the 
secretary their money, at the end of a long pole, and 
it was understood that the secretary was paid to 
do all the visiting of the dirty, smelly places, and 
to save the town the heartaches that the sight of 
misery gives. No wonder some of the secretaries! 
have such big, sad eyes! 

But how brave they are! One of them, Miss 
Rhoda Welding, has been a constant wonder to me, 
for she has braved even thugs and gunmen, and never 
hesitates to call out, in her talks, the names of 



296 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the landlords who own the most disreputable old 
traps. 

As we had no funds, to help In our housing cam- 
paign, we could only get surveys, etc., by voluntary 
service, and this the secretaries gave most gladly. 

Counting up the elements of our strength, I re- 
turned to the State Board of Health. Since our 
defeat in 1911 they had used every opportunity to 
further housing reform. The subject was introduced 
into health institutes, and I was asked to speak at 
a number, over the state. Dr. Hurty also asked 
me to address the health officers of the state, in 
convention, and they passed a resolution asking the 
legislature to enact a tenement law. After speak- 
ing to the State Association of Trained Nurses, who 
had prepared a similar resolution, I felt that every 
power for health was aligned with us. 

Finally, at a full session of the State Board of 
Health, I was given a most cordial hearing, and 
they offered to help in every way possible. 

The most valuable result was a bulletin showing 
the relation of tuberculosis to bad housing, which 
they had printed and laid on the desk of every mem- 
ber of the legislature. 

One strong and decisive move, that enlisted the 
churches of the state, was the plan for a " Housing 
Sunday " all over Indiana. We arranged the details 



VICTORY 297 

through the charities organisations, sending, through 
them, letters to every minister in their towns, asking 
that one meeting of a certain Sunday be given to 
the consideration of the conditions of the poor in 
their city. Each one received a brief statement of 
our housing problem, also a sermonette, to use if 
desired, which began " You whom the Lord hath 
blessed.'' 

I saw newspaper reports of some of the sermons, 
and they were the so»t that should stir men's souls. 
It was surprising what texts were found, ranging 
from the question of Cain, " Am I my brother's 
keeper? " on through all the books of the Bible. A 
striking text was taken from Deuteronomy : " When 
thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a 
battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood 
upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." I 
should like to know what penalties Moses would have 
prescribed for those who bring " blood upon their 
house " by omitting fire escapes. 

From time to time a number of pulpits of the 
state had been opened to me. I had spoken in Jew- 
ish temples, and churches of every denomination. 
Most distinctly I remember giving a " sermon " in 
Indianapolis, at the time of the charities conference, 
when, as was customary, the conference speakers 
filled the pulpits qf the city. It was published 



298 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

afterwards in the Survey. " Follow me," was the 
text, and I tried to show how, if we follow Christ 
all the way, we must go among the homes of the 
(wretched and needy, as He did. As simply and 
plainly as possible I told the story of the poor in 
Indiana, and made an appeal for help, in the name 
of Christ. 

There were many of my friends in the church that 
day, besides those who belonged to the congregation. 
Among them was one who sat near enough for me to 
notice his close interest in the story. Long after- 
wards he said to me, " I made up my mind, sitting 
there in church, that I would run for the legislature, 
for the purpose of carrying on the housing fight." 

It was Senator Charles B. Clarke. He was elected 
to the legislature of 1913, and made the tenement 
bill his chief charge, working for it with untiring 
energy. 

He was one of the strongest Democrats in the 
Senate, and that party had an overwhelming ma- 
jority. His political strength was a most valuable 
asset, but it was the spirit with which he went into 
the fight that made his leadership invincible. Sen- 
ator Clarke is a man of splendid physique and in- 
domitable courage. My last fear of the " Big Dog " 
vanished when I looked at his broad shoulders and 
towering height. The test of his efficiency, however, 



VICTORY a99 

was in the finer matters of difficult diplomacy, and 
the use of a keen wit. The latter was ready for all 
occasions, as we found at our social gatherings in 
his home. I remember one dinner party, there, at 
which we were comparing our Irish ancestry — he 
comes from the Clarigs of County Kerry. One of 
the guests, of different blood, listened with passive 
interest. " Well, I always defend the Irish," she 
said. " They don't need it," flashed Senator Clarke. 
It was along in the session th-at I found how much 
of a sacrifice he made in entering the legislature. It 
was not only that a heavy and exacting law practice 
had to be laid aside, but certain interests were en- 
tirely forfeited. 

In the same spirit the Coxes had kept from me 
the fact that the tenement law of 1909 directly af- 
fected some of their property. I mention these in- 
! stances to show what pure and exalted motives actu- 
I ate spme men in our assemblies, despite the sneers 
j that are often flung at legislatures. 
I The autumn passed, and the winter closed about 
me like an Iron Tower, bringing the day of doom 
1 steadily nearer. Instead of my experiences lessen- 
, ing my anxiety, they increased it, for I knew so much 
I better with what I had to contend. Moreover, I was 
I growing sensitive about the '' spot light." My first 
j campaign had been, as before said, like going into a 



300 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

burning housfe to rescue a child. But to go into a 
second fire to rescue the same child, I had felt, in 
I9II5 was more spectacular than was pleasant. And 
now to go a third time into the flames, to save that 
identical child, was just too much like a vaudeville 
^' stunt." It was almost more than I could bear. 
At the thought of that last public ordeal, that hor- 
rible night of my defeat, I felt in my heart that I 
would rather walk over coals of fire than to go 
through that again — if that would do the work. 
But it wouldn't. There was nothing to do but to 
shut my ears, my eyes, and my very soul to all the 
things that hurt, to set my teeth and go back again. 

But before going back I was determined to lay 
siege to every good Power that could be expected 
to stand for the welfare of the State, in opposition 
to selfish interest. Beginning with the Governor 
and the Lieutenant-governor, I went on down the 
list, sending a personal letter, with data of the hous- 
ing conditions in Indiana. To each member of the 
legislature went the same data, with literature show- 
ing how health and morals were endangered by bad 
housing, and a letter that made a direct appeal. 

This time we had the help of prominent men all 
over the state, who were in our Housing Associa- 
tion. We had men of all parties, and women of all 
beliefs. It was a kind of sublimated politics, made 



VICTORY 301 

up of the best and strongest elements, all mingled 
in one. Sometimes I was a bit anxious, as, for in- 
stance, when two good friends, of different parties, 
tried for the same ofBce. But no one could tempt 
me to partisanship. I had only one answer to those 
who said : " Wait until the Progressives are in 
power, and we'll pass a tenement law " ; " wait until 
the Socialists are in power and we'll pass a tenement 
law '' ; " wait until the Suffragists are in power and 
; we'll pass a tenement law.'' 

I It was, " I can't wait, and we will get our law 
! first." 

There was only one of the political leaders whom 

I had never met, but when both Republicans and 

i Democrats asked, " Haven't you seen Mr. Taggart 

] yet?" I realised how important a man he was. 

" You'd better drop everything and see him," said 

my husband, and arranged for me to have a brief 

I interview. 

It was brief indeed, lasting only ten minutes, and 
i they were interrupted by many people on many er- 
i rands. But I found that Mr. Taggart didn't need 
i any arguments, or any explanations, for he knew 
, the whole history of the tenement law, the law itself, 
{ section by section, the reasons for each, the condi- 
i tions of the poor, and everything that I was pre- 
j pared to tell him. I think I must have sat with 



302 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

my mouth and eyes both open, as he took up my own 
story and went on with it. I was dumbfounded, for 
I had never before met any one, not an expert, who 
understood the whole subject, without any explana- 
tion. He spoke, with definite knowledge and with 
kindling anger, of some tenement conditions he had 
seen. I hardly knew where to begin again, when 
he stopped. " And so we are asking for this law — " 
I said. " Who are ' we ' .'^ " he demanded, with a 
searching look. I was glad to have the names of the 
oflScers and committees of the Indiana Housing As- 
sociation to lay before him. " And the Federation 
of Women's Clubs, and the charity organisations — '' 

" But you are the ^ Mother of the Tenement law,' 
are you not ? " he asked. 

" Yes," I admitted, feeling very small, and un- 
reasonably shy. Then I plucked up my courage. 
" I'm not asking you to put this bill through, but 
only to help us to get a fair fight," I said. " And 
I'm not appealing to you as a politician but as a man, 
for the sake of your State, and of the poor, and the 
working people — and the children." 

" I can't say what we will be able to do," he said, 
very cordially and kindly, " but I will help you all 
I can ; and that is something I very seldom say," he 
added. 

I went away with a light heart, in absolute confi- 



VICTORY 303 

dence in his word, a confidence that he honoured un- 
der the severest stress of opposition. And I never 
asked any one else to approach him. 

We had taken it for granted, and it seemed the 
only fair thing, that we should adhere to the bill of 
1911, to which we had agreed after so much discus- 
sion, much as we should have liked to introduce Mr. 
Veiller's Model Law, as it stood. But one morning 
I was surprised to receive a letter from one whom 
we counted a supporter of the cause, in which he 
stated some views of his own, and of one of the 
architects, that fairly took me off my feet. The 
letter urged objections to the bill, and pointed out 
vital changes that, if they had been made, would 
have left a bill not worth fighting for. 

There was no reason for me to be alarmed, but 
fear outruns reason. Just as an apparition will 
make one's hair rise who does not believe in ghosts, 
even the shadow of a danger that I should have known 
was imaginary gave me an actual chill and a veritable 
fever, with a feeling about the limbs as of having 
run a long distance. For half a day I was sick in 
bed. Then I crept down stairs, and called up Mr. 
Cox by long distance, and told him all about it. 
" Don't be alarmed," he said. " There's no dan- 
ger." And such was my faith in his judgment, as 
well as in his ability, that I ceased to fear. Then 



304 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the reaction set in, and the ebbing tide of strength 
and courage swept back in a flood that left me at 
the fighting point. It is a good thing for timid 
people to get a scare, once in a while. It always 
left me stimulated and more determined than ever. 
In this case we found that there was only some mis- 
understanding, and reached a friendly agreement 
without trouble. 

The days passed, and that day came when I had 
to go once more to the legislature. 

" Mother hates to leave you again, but you un- 
derstand how it is," I said to the children. 

" Yes, we understand, and we want you to get 
that bill through,'' they replied. " You get it passed, 
and when I grow up I'll see it's enforced," said my 
little son. " Yes, and so will I," echoed his sister, 
valiantly. 

Now, once again the surging crowds, the thronged 
corridors of the state house. Once more^ " Pibroch 
of Dhonil Dhu, knell for the onset ! " 

Mr. Cox advised that we begin in the Senate this 
time, so there we had our bill introduced, and, to 
our great relief, it sped smoothly and merrily on 
its course. No one could have been more courteous 
than our Lieutenant-governor O'Neill. No one could 
have made things pleasanter than Senator Curtis, 



VICTORY 305 

the majority leader. Hitherto we had had to use 
our entire forces to drum, drum, poll, poll; but, 
thanks to Senator Clarke's thorough work, it was 
not now necessary. On '' ringing grooves " the bill 
went spinning along, and all the jangling of op- 
posing forces only lent excitement and zest. Not 
only were old friends back in the Senate, but quite a 
number, who had strongly opposed us before, now 
seemed to realise that the time was ripe for housing 
reform. Many elements conspired to aid us, and 
ijmany voices mingled in the harmonious chorus of 
'/friendly interest. 

j Another chorus, like an angelus echo, a far-off 
chorus of women's voices, sounded through the pauses 
of our battle hymn. 
\ It was the State Federation of Women's Clubs ! 

One of the members said that session : " The men 
I elected us, and as soon as we get here the women tell 
is how to vote." 

It has been called " A woman's session," as it really 
ras, in a way. 

There were more bills for women than had ever 

been known ; bills for a Teachers' Pension, a Moth- 

ps' Pension, for suffrage, for shorter hours for 

fv^omen workers, and numberless others. Women were 

|jj:here lobbying, too, by the dozen. 

[I, " Some of the men didn't seem to want to be both- 



306 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

ered,'* a lady lobbyist told me. I did notice that 
some of them had an unwonted hunted look, which 
was quite different from " that absent, far away 
look " I have heard spoken of on the faces of legis- 
lators. I felt that with so many women wanting 
so many things I must be very, very circumspect, 
and took orders from Senator Clarke before speak- 
ing to the men. Besides, if they had expressed an 
intention of voting for the tenement bill, that was 
enough. 

I was surprised, afterwards, to find that several 
of the men were rather hurt because we had not asked 
them to do something for us. " I spoke for your 
bill, even though none of you asked me to," one 
said. And then I had to explain that, as he had 
stood for housing reform in 1909 and I9II5 we didn't 
want to seem to doubt his loyalty. 

It must not be imagined that all the slum land- 
lords had had a change of heart, and were willing 
with one accord to take their teeth out of the poor. 
Until the millennium comes, we need not expect self- 
ishness and greed to disappear, and, until they do, 
the weak will have to be protected by law against 
the strong. There will be need for housing laws 
until the Holy City, pure and clean, descends to 
earth, and one cannot imagine that there will be 



VICTORY 307 

any landlords in it — in that capacity, let me hasten 
to add. 

True it was that we saw familiar cloven hoof 
prints, all about the legislative halls, and I was sure 
a few times that I had come face to face with the 
Evil One in person. 

One morning, on reaching the Senate early, I 
found that some hand had laid on every desk a type- 
written sheet in regard to our bill. It announced 
that the " So-called Mrs. Bacon's housing bill '' was 
in reality a bill of the building and plumbing trusts, 
and that they paid me $5.00 a day for my services 
as lobbyist! Certain sections of the bill were held 
up to ridicule, one especially being designated as 
" The Plumbers' Delight." 

We couldn't help but laugh over the absurd state- 
ments, but Mrs. Foor and I quickly gathered them 
all up, before the senators came in. 

This was the last I ever heard of being called a 
paid lobbyist, until some months ago, when one of 
the opposition made the statement in the presence 
of a friend. " But who on earth would pay Mrs. 
Bacon's expenses.'^" the friend objected. The an- 
swer was some Indianapolis company that I had 
never heard of. 

There was really quite a iSght at the last reading 



808 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

of our bill in the Senate, enough to rally all our 
friends to the defence, and call out all our artillery 
of oratory. After Senator Clarke spoke, cham- 
pions arose all over the room, and, at the last. Sen- 
ator Woods finished with a brilliant climax. Then, 
in a few minutes, we were all congratulating our- 
selves over a rousing victory — there, on that same 
old ghost-haunted battle ground of other days ! 

And now, avoiding as best we could the trail of 
the hoof prints, we took hold of the red tape clue 
and began to thread the mazes that led to the other 
House. 

With a change of scene in this drama, new char- 
acters are introduced. 

The Senate had been full of familiar faces, but how 
many strange ones I saw in the House! My heart 
sank as I wondered how many personal interviews I 
ought to give. By what algebraic formula, I 
thought, could we ever determine the " unknown 
quantities '' among those one hundred men. A Demo- 
cratic landslide had given their party an over- 
whelming plurality, and swept into the legislature a 
certain number of new men, whose course it would 
be difficult to predict. Knowing who were the dom- 
inant men, in certain districts, we could make a 
strong guess at the affiliations of many of the men, 
and knew from experience which would be helpful 



VICTORY 309 

and which hurtful. Studying the legislative di- 
rectory, I was always glad to see the word " farmer," 
after some of the names, for it gave promise of open- 
mindedness and independence. " Editor " was also 
encouraging, and so was anything that promised 
connection with the labour unions, for these men real- 
ised, by this time, that we were working for their 
own homes, and stood by us manfully. 

The overbalance of power made the House a very 
unwieldy body, over which few could have presided 
as did Mr. Homer Cook, the Speaker, and the fact 
that it was divided into factions gave great uncer- 
tainty as to the results of legislation. 

To my great relief, Mr. Joe Cravens and Mr. 
Eschbach were still there, and ready to rally our old 
adherents. But Mr. McGinnis was absent, and Dr. 
Foor, and though both lent their aid we missed 
them on the floor. As before the First District 
(ours) was " solid,'' and our men from home stood 
by most gallantly. One of these, " Jim '' Ensle, 
had married an old-time friend of mine, whom I had 
known from her babyhood. He was a commanding 
figure in debate, and one of the most popular lead- 
ers. 

We were most lucky in having our bill in charge 
of Mr. Robert Hughes from Indianapolis. Although 
one of the younger members, his career in the House 



310 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

•added lustre to the line of statesmen from whom he 
comes. Through some of the most trying legisla- 
tive ordeals that I have ever known Mr. Hughes never 
lost his poise, his serenity or his courtly manner, 
and the thought of them will always shine through 
my recollection of those clouded times. 

It was when our bill stuck in the House committee 
that we began to scent danger ahead. Now, as be- 
fore, news poured in to us from every side of the 
doings of the opposition. As one instance, an hour 
after a prominent citizen shook hands with me, and 
wished me success, we were reliably informed that 
he went to his representative and told him not to 
vote for the tenement law, that it was " no good." 

Wherever we turned, we saw these constituents 
from " home." As we passed by their members' 
desks, we saw their heads bent together over the tene- 
ment bill, with glowering faces, and heard the words, 
" my house," " my lots." But we never heard these 
landowners mention public welfare, health or safety. 
There was nothing to do but to wait until the con- 
stituents left, and then to find the men whose word 
was the antidote to this poison of personal interest. 
I remember bringing half the prominent men in the 
state house to steady one wavering member, who was 
distracted between duty and friendship. It is only 
fair to add that duty prevailed. 



VICTORY 311 

One fine old fellow, who had stood by us from 
1909, came to me one day, in distress over a wealthy 
friend who owned '' valuable flats," and who was in 
high displeasure over his adherence to our cause. 
"Are those flats as valuable as a child?" I asked 
him, but he was too worried to take in my meaning. 
" Won't you talk to him.'^ " he pleaded. I complied 
most heartily, and when the flat owner, who was 
really a young man of fine possibilities, was con- 
vinced that he was already well within the law, I 
was nearly as glad as my kind old friend. 

No matter if enemies with bayonets had covered 
all the grounds about the state house, I was deter- 
mined not to show any fear. 

" There's a great big bunch of real estate men 
here, all up in the air over this bill," excitedly an- 
nounced a big representative, whose allegiance we 
held by a thread. 

" Oh, they won't do any damage," I answered 
airily. 

" But they're all just as mad as can be. They're 
going to make trouble for you," he insisted. 

" Now you just wait and see," I answered. " They 
won't give us a bit of trouble. It will all blow over." 

But at our last committee hearing there they were, 
with grave and darkling looks. They were a good, 
substantial type of men, too, well known and re- 



312 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

spected business men. And we saw that they had 
three typewritten pages of objections to our bill, 
and they had come there for the purpose of seeing 
the bill changed to meet those objections. 

The committee sat in silence, with a judicial air, 
waiting for every one to assemble for the hearing. 
At one side, Mr. Cox was introducing me to some 
of the real estate men. " I wish we might have had 
an opportunity to talk over these objections with 
you, before this hearing,'^ I could not refrain from 
saying to one of them. " Very likely there are points 
that we could agree upon, and it would save so much 
time and trouble." 

I was much distressed, knowing the fatal possi- 
bilities of the occasion. To my great relief, the men 
agreed to give us a hearing, in the ofBce of Mr. Win- 
terrowd, the building inspector, at the City Hall. 
Mr. Cox could not go, and I set out for the City 
Hall at the appointed time with some uneasiness, 
though it was reassuring to know that Mr. Winter- 
rowd was a host in himself. 

When I reached the office I found the men sitting 
or standing about the long table — twelve, twenty 
or more, if I did not see double. But so many arms 
were waving, and so many voices were raised in ex- 
cited discussion that it was hard to tell how many 
there were. 



VICTORY S13 

The noise sank to a buzz as I slipped into the chair 
reserved for me, beside Mr. Winterrowd. It was 
something more than rapid walking that made my 
heart beat fast, and my breath short, but I glanced 
up with a smile, and was surprised to find that all 
the scowls had vanished, and the smile had spread 
(around the entire table. 

" Now, let's see what's the trouble," I began, and 
Mr. Winterrowd and I went through the entire list 
of objections with them, explaining the whys and 
wherefores, to the end. Of course, these restric- 
tions were all new, and it was only natural that they 
should be concerned about their effect. Once again, 
my study of the history of housing laws in other 
states came to my aid. " I guess she knows about 
as much about these things as we do," said one of 
the elder men, and I felt much flattered. 

We found that most of the objections were the 
result of misinterpretation, or misunderstanding of 
the effect of certain provisions. I must say that 
I have never met a more reasonable set of men. 
All they asked was to be convinced that the provi- 
sions were fair, and they were as quick to see what 
was unfair to the tenant, or detrimental to the com- 
munity, as we could wish. At the last, there were 
only three points upon which they insisted, and these 
we yielded cheerfully. Then we all shook hands. 



314* BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

and parted in the best of humour, and they never 
came near the state house again. The House com- 
mittee accepted our agreement, and the three points 
were duly changed, as the men wished. 

And so the cloud vanished. But landlords kept 
boiling up, all about us, and I couldn't shake off the 
feeling that every hard-faced man who stood, around 
the doors of the House was a slum owner. 

There were thirteen men on the committee that 
had our bill. It was hard for them to all get to- 
gether to sit on all of their bills, of which they had 
an enormous number to consider. And until they 
all sat on our bill, and went over every word of it 
(it had ninety-eight sections) they wouldn't report 
it out, they declared. 

" Of course not," we answered. 

But they kept on not all getting together on it, 
and a few of them began to be touchy about being 
asked about it, and it would have been very funny, 
after while, if it hadn't been so serious, and the dan- 
ger of offending any of them so appalling. An X- 
ray picture of our situation would have disclosed some 
obstructions that never showed in our faces or our 
speech, and our diplomatic relations became almost 
Oriental in their formality. 

Finally, the committee announced that they were 
ready to take the bill in hand, and go over every 



VICTORY 315 

word, for they had decided that certain changes must 
be made in it. I think I must have given a little 
groan, and murmured something about the " techni- 
cal parts " of the bill having been carefully prepared 
by experts. " We aren't going to hurt your bill, 
we are just going to make it better and stronger," 
one of the committee reassured me, in the kindest 
manner. 

" Did you ever sit by during an operation on one 
of your own children? " I asked him. And there 
was always a little bit of that in my thought of 
the bill. After having nursed and doctored and 
lived with and sat up at nights with a creature like 
that, for so long, it does seem, in a way, human. 

It was a long operation, this time, for our bill 
stuck for seventeen days, and we had to sit by and 
wait for it to come out of the committee's hands. 
" There's plenty of time," they would say, but I 
knew the danger of delay. And of course I couldn't 
say that I wanted to go home and see the children, 
because the committee was not asking me to stay. 

And so we waited, all those seventeen days, hoping 
that each day would end our anxiety. If we women 
could have had some knitting to do, we might have 
made mittens for the blue fingers of many of the 
poor, while we waited. Mr. Cox came and went, 
working, reassuring, giving much time from his 



316 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

heavy cares. Senator Clarke was at hand, and on 
call, but it was Mr. Hughes upon whom the burden 
rested here. We never left the field. Many times 
I was tempted to go out and get a moving van full 
of the miserable looking tenants of the worst slums 
of the city, and bring them in to sit in the front 
seats, on the principle of the jury trials. I could 
have found plenty of consumptives, and if they had 
coughed it would have been very impressive. But 
that was too deadly to risk. 

It would make a thrilling tale if I could tell all 
we saw and heard, as we sat there, with so many 
coming and going. It is really too bad not to give 
more of the " atmosphere " of the story, but if I 
gave any of the real atmosphere my readers would 
get up and go out, for a gasp of air. - The House 
was called " the smoke house " because of the blue 
tobacco clouds that never lifted. Our clothing, even 
our hair, reeked of it, as if we had all been smoking. 
But that wasn't as bad as the reek of the slums. 

While we are waiting, let me go back and tell who 

we " were, and how I was situated. 

This session, my friends would not hear to my 
going to a hotel. So many beautiful homes were 
opened to me that I went in an orbit from one to an- 
other, and never finished the round. Beginning with 
the T. C. Day's, there was the Wm. L. Taylor's, 



66 



VICTORY 317 

the Senator Clarke's, the V, H. Lockwood's, and the 
Coxes, and I got no farther. Every one of them 
were '' Islands of Providence," with good cheer, lov- 
ing care, and strong counsel, that gave 

"Strength for the daily task. 
Courage to face the road." 

Looking back over the lonely heart-sick days of 
my first two sessions, I realised how much it meant 
to be in these homes. 

The last of my orbit brought me to the Lock- 
woods', where was gathered a little house party whose 
interests centred in the legislature. Mrs. Lockwood 
herself had been one of the generals in the Child 
Labour fight of the previous session, and was still 
watching over the law they had won. She was made 
one of the State Commission appointed to investi- 
gate the conditions of working women. 

Mrs. W. E. Miller, of South Bend, now on the 
same commission, was there, working for a bill for 
shorter hours for women. 

Mrs. S. E. Stimson, of Terre Haute, attended the 
session in the capacity of a member of the school 
board, interested in the vocational education bill. In 
the capacity of a Florence Crittenden board member, 
she was watching several other bills, of interest to 
girls. In the capacity of chairman of the legisla- 



818 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

tive committee of our Federation, she was helping 
with the tenement bill. If she had had as many bills 
as she had " capacities,'' she would have needed to be 
much larger and stronger, and would have been a 
subject for " incorporation," as some one says. But 
her greatest capacity was for friendship, and she 
stood by me, through all our trying vigils, with a 
brain like a man's, and the devotion and patience 
of a St. Griselda. 

Mrs. Foor was there, too. She was looking after 
a number of health measures, but was doing most 
for the tenement bill. 

We all sat together, sometimes with local members 
of our Federation housing committee, in one corner 
of the House, every day. That is, we sat when we 
were not reconnoitring or doing active work. We 
lunched together, down town, and, at the close of 
the winter days, straggled into the cheery Lockwood 
home, weary, draggled, and often homesick. There 
Mrs. Lockwood mothered us — she has a genius for 
being a mother — and around the dinner table we 
discussed our day, while Mr. Lockwood, a lawyer 
and civic worker, advised, condoled, applauded, or 
laughed us out of our discouragement. Then to- 
gether we planned what moves to make next day. 
And next day we went back, with hope renewed — 
and waited. In whatever way we could, we strength- 



VICTORY 319 

ened our position, but all we could do was much like 
the eflPorts of the Blind Men who went Bat Fowling. 
It was about this time that I called my faithful 
housing committee together, with Mrs. McWhirter, 
Mrs. Clarke, and other federation leaders, and we 
arranged to send word to every comer of the state, 
that the time had come for their help. How the 
letters and telegrams came pouring back, in response, 
to the members of the legislature ; not only from the 
club women, but from prominent men whom they 
had seen, in different communities. 

It happened that when our committee meeting was 
called, Miss Hatfield, the probation officer of Lake 
County, was in the city, and I brought her to tell our 
ladies the story she had related to me, of the mis- 

I erable unsanitary homes of the immigrants in Gary, 
East Chicago, Indiana Harbor, and the other in- 
dustrial cities on the Lake. 

I Her story made our women gasp, as it had me, 

I though I had visited some of the scenes she men- 
tioned. " Will you go with us, and tell that story 

\ to Governor Ralston ? '' I asked her. She consented, 

I and we telephoned at once to make the appointment, 
and, going over to the state house, were given instant 

I audience. 

' We had met Mrs. Ralston, socially, in her own 
home, and at clubs and dinners, and knew what em- 



320 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

phasis she put upon the home life of the people. 
We had been received before by the Governor, as I 
think every one engaged in welfare work had been, 
that winter. There was that in his manner that in- 
spired confidence, and gave an assurance of strength, 
that one felt even more than his unusual dignity. 

The Governor listened with close attention to Miss 
Hatfield's story, and I saw him start as she related 
some of the shocking incidents of the wretchedness, 
the overcrowding and promiscuity of the immigrant 
homes. 

He had a few searching questions to ask both of 
us, in regard to the application of the tenement bill 
to the housing conditions she had described, and then, 
with a few pleasant words, we withdrew. 

That night, at a banquet given by Hon. Charles W. 
Fairbanks, Governor Ralston spoke of our visit, and 
expressed his deep desire for a better safeguarding 
of the boys and girls in the homes of Indiana. The 
effect of his speech, which was in all of the papers, 
was all we could have asked. 

We were counting, now, our men, our arms and 
our ammunition, as in a state of siege. How we 
rejoiced when Mr. Spencer Ball, the president of 
the Terre Haute Commercial Club, came over, day 
after day, to fight with us. He was worth a whole 



VICTORY 321 

army of privates, and could counteract car loads of 
paid lobbyists, of the type we had to fight. 

At this time the help of the Indianapolis press was 
of more vital importance than ever before, as every 
issue contained legislative news. I realised how 
many friends I had in various newspaper offices, as 
members of the staff, or reporters, of the News, the 
Star, the Sentinel and the Sun — representing all 
politics, — met me in the state house. Strong edi- 
torials came out at critical moments. The News 
gave me a chair in their state house office, and a hook 
on which to hang up my wraps. More than this, a 
charming, golden haired feature writer, with a pen 
of true steel, often sat or strolled with me, upon my 
rounds. 

The only thing that was not quite so pleasant was 
the snap shots of various press artists. My husband 
sent me one that he had clipped from a paper, and 
wrote " You didn't look like this when you left home. 
If you look like that now, for goodness' sake, come 
home at once." 

It must not be supposed that any bright little so- 
cial bubbles on the surface of that deep sea made us 
forget the great jawed monsters beneath, or the bones 
of shipwrecked mariners that lay bleaching on legis- 
lative reefs. We were out on rafts, done up in life 



322 iBEAUTY FOR ASHES 

preservers, and we knew it. But we had to look up, 
because we didn't dare look down. 

It was well that I didn't know just how much dan- 
ger we really were in, till afterwards. Several times 
Mr. Taggart had sent word, " Tell Mrs. Bacon not 
to worry," but I didn't know, until the worst was 
over, how anxious our men had been over some unex- 
pected developments, that had given the opposition 
a fresh hold, how hard Mr. Taggart had worked for 
our biU, and how much personal attention he had 
given it. 

At last the committee finished their work upon our 
bill, and it was reported out, passed its second read- 
ing smoothly, and went on to the last. 

There is probably nothing else in life like the sen- 
sation of having a bill one has worked hard for come 
up in a legislative body for a decisive vote. 

When one has cared enough to stick to it, night 
and day, for five years, one cares too much to await 
its fate with calmness. There ought to be a little 
curtained booth, or a conning tower, where the 
sponsor could watch the contest, unobserved, for 
this long, slow public execution, with every one watch- 
ing one's face and feeling one's pulse, is awful. 

There was a crowd in the House when its calendar 
showed that our bill was to have its last reading. 



VICTORY S2S 

There was a goodly showing of club women, and a 
little knot of reporters gathered about me as the 
debate began. I had to move, though, for in the 
very last agonies a lady came and wanted me to listen 
to something about her house being ruined, if the bill 
went through. Her description showed me at once 
that she was mistaken, but I couldn't convince her. 
" Oh, no, no ! It won't be ! It can't be ! You don't 
understand! Go agk your architect. I can't talk 
now! Look, they are going to vote," I begged of 
her, and finally fled. 

I found Mr. Cox on the other side of the room, 
and presently Senator Clarke and Mr. Hughes joined 
us, and there our friends hunted me out. And it 
was not a public execution, after all. A splendid 
avalanche of " ays " snowed under the single '' no," 
deeper than an Alpine gorge. And oh, then, we 
wished we could have piled honours upon our staunch 
lieutenants, as high as a corresponding Alpine peak. 
No wonder the women applauded, as some of the 
men, who gave their reasons for voting, added, " and 
because the women wanted it." 

The women, the homes of Indiana, were honoured 
that day by the men of our legislature. And we 
had won a law for the one hundred cities of our 
state. 



SU BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

It is a foundation broad enough for the tallest 
structure of Housing Reform that, in years to come, 
public sentiment is sure to build upon it. 

Suddenly, in the midst of our rejoicing, I realised 
that the nerve tension of the last few hours had re- 
laxed, leaving everj- muscle aching, and a deadly 
weakness. Laughing, our quartette of women took 
me upstairs, into a darkened empty ofBce room, and, 
in lieu of a couch, laid me to rest on a long polished 
table, on a pile of soft wraps. Afterwards, we went 
to the Lockwoods', and had a lovely jubilee dinner 
that was planned and ordered, flowers and all, by 
the eleven-year-old daughter of the house. 

The last scene of this act was the Dennison Hotel, 
and the time was the night after our victory, when a 
party of my friends assembled for congratulations 
and good-byes, among them a number of the state 
officials and their wives. 

As I looked about me, in the warmth and glow, 
I recalled how I had slipped away, early, in the rain, 
the last time. How many friends I had now, to bid 
good-bye! How many more than at the close of 
those other two sessions ! How many friends — and 
I loved them all, and loved the beautiful city, with its 
stately homes, and its great monument, from which 
broad avenues radiate, star-like. Part of me lives 



VICTORY 325 

tKere still, and draws me back, claiming citizenship 
in our state's capital. 

One thing that gave me the most pleasure, that 
night, was to bring together so many strong men, 
of all politics and all factions, and to see them 
cordially jubilating together over a victory that they 
had all worked in harmony to win. 

There were flowers and felicitations, pleasant 
words, and some sad ones, and the curtain fell. 

The epilogue comes in the next chapter, in front 
of the curtain, which, I hope, has been rung down 
to rise no more. 



CHAPTER XII 

LOOKING FORWARD 

There are great things to do while the careless ones sleep, 
There are heights to be won, there are ramparts to keep; 
And the call that we heed is not Fortune nor Power, 
But the need of a hero — the cry of the Hour! 
We have dreamed of a time when the world should be bright 
With the dawning of Peace and the triumph of Right. 
But our slumber is shaken; the dreamer must waken; 
He must rouse him to battle, and gird him to fight! 

(From " Battle Song." A. F. B.) 

" And what are you going to do next.? Suffrage.'^ " 
asked a friend. 

*^ No, housing reform. Housing till I die. I have 
made only a good beginning," was my answer. 

There is so much to be done! Contemplating the 

vastness of the field, and the smallness of the force 

that is at work, I am reminded of the hypothetical 

" seven maids with seven mops," attacking the ocean 

to " try to sweep it clear." Almost as hopeless 

seems our task. In our state how many mops are 

needed ! And beyond our borders — dismaying 

thought! If, in all the cities, every house that is 

past repairing could be pulled down or burned up, 

how great would be the crash, how heaven-high the 

326 



LOOKING FORWARD 327 

conflagration. It would be a veritable crack of 
Doom and glare of the Judgment. But this is only 
a pleasant little picture, to cheer housing reformers, 
while we wait, for, " at this poor dying rate," as the 
old hymn says, our country is not to be cleaned with 
a crash. 

In my own state, and particularly in my own city, 
I can hear the actual sound of the rotting timbers 
falling. Our strong city administration is carrying 
on the work of housing reform most vigorously, and, 
by means of our state law and various ordinances, 
is either making over or tearing down everything 
bad in the way of buildings, as fast as possible. 
" This city must be cleaned up," Mayor Bosse's 
edict has gone forth, and all the departments are 
entering into the work. " I couldn't sleep for sev- 
eral nights, after my first round of our tenements, 
thinking of the little children I had seen in some of 
those dreadful places," said Mr. Edward Kerth, our 
building inspector. Needless to say, he will do thor- 
ough work. 

And now our organisations of business men have 
just passed strong resolutions pledging their sup- 
port to the movement, and have created a joint hous- 
ing committee. Their plan includes the building of 
good houses for working men, as well as the wiping 
out of our slums. 



Sm BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

It IS a most hopeful sign that our architects are 
taking hold with right good will, and that their 
State Association is pledged to Housing Reform. 
Not only will this make the enforcement of the law 
much easier, but the value of their interest, and their 
recognition of responsibility for public welfare, can 
hardly be estimated. It is to them that we look for 
the development of better, more durable, more con- 
venient and more comfortable houses, that shall be 
within the reach of the hitherto neglected classes. 
It is to them that we must look, in the absence of 
civic experts, for the redemption of our cities from 
their unnecessary ugliness. 

In my own city I have seen not only the action 
but the reaction of housing reform. Many people 
labour under a delusion that I am an official with a 
salary. " I thought you ought to know about the 
family back of me,'' comes buzzing over the telephone, 
every few days, with a description of one more case 
of overcrowding or unsanitation. 

" I am glad you are interested,'' I say (and right 
glad I am), " and the building inspector wiU appreci- 
ate your help. Won't you call him up please — 
No. 462? '^ 

Fewer plaints come to me now from angry land- 
lords and weeping women, as the tenement law is 
better understood. But even the tenants who suffer 







•T3 

^ c 






s 






o 



J3 

.2 

o 
o 



LOOKING FORWARD 329 

most grumble, occasionally, when we try to pull them 
out of an old house before it falls over them, espe- 
cially when they are misled about the law, by shrewd 
landlords. 

I have a soiled and misspelled letter, in a pencil 
scrawl, whose message shows the sharpness of an- 
other wit than that which directed the hand. It 
appeals to me to stop the demolition of a notorious 
old tenement, whose ribs were bare of boards, and 
whose condition beggars description. " We thought 
you were our friend," the letter says. " We don't 
know where to go, and, if you can't stop the work- 
men, will you shelter us yourself? '' 

The inspector assured me that they found better 
places, and indeed, none could be worse. One of the 
families, I found, was Lucindy's ! Her husband had 
died, and she was trying to keep her little ones to- 
gether. We were glad to see her rescued once more, 
and installed in a better neighbourhood. 

A wonderful result has come from the educational 
campaign of the last six years, in the awakening of 
public sentiment. Where the law compels one decent 
building, sentiment builds or repairs a score, and 
whatever is done by sentiment always goes far beyond 
the demands of the law. More than cutting windows 
into some hundreds of old houses, or saving the yard 
spaces behind as many new ones, is it to cut windows 



330 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

into the minds of the people and to give them broader 
standards. 

Some of the sins that used to be committed in 
ignorance in Indiana will never be repeated. Build- 
ers are voluntarily making better plans, in many in- 
stances; some, through an awakened sense of pro- 
priety, others in anticipation of future restrictions. 

One of the most significant results has been the 
building of an entire mining village, upon model 
plans, giving the miners sanitation, conveniences, 
and many comforts, providing spring water, and giv- 
ing each house its garden — things hitherto unheard 
of. " We used to build a miner's shack for $100,'' 
said the owner. " These cost over $1000, but they 
pay a good per cent." 

All of the above sounds so smooth and pleasant 
that it might lead some readers to believe that no law 
is needed. Alas, those who make the law necessary 
are deaf to sentiment, which has a gentle voice but no 
" teeth." Only the law, which has both a bite and 
a bark, can make them hear. 

" You will go on and carry your work into other 
states, won't you? " I am asked. And a magazine 
answers for me, " She will never rest until every 
state has a law as good as her own." 

" A weary lot is thine," methought, reading that 



LOOKING FORWARD 331 

comment. Happily, the National Housing Associ- 
ation, to which I belong, goes far afield, and is organ- 
ised to answer the appeals for help and expert ad- 
vice that are coming in, from all sides. Still, there 
grows a pile of letters upon my desk, asking for 
lectures, for help in starting housing campaigns, etc., 
and it is not in the heart of a housing reformer to 
refuse. But whether it be a chamber of commerce, 
a civic association or a woman's federation that 
gives the invitation, I hear always, above it, the 
faint, far-off call of little voices, and see the beckon- 
ing of little shadowy hands. 

And so it happens that I see more and more of 
the misery of the cities. 

*^If you could stay over another day we would 
show you the beauties of our city," almost every one 
says, when, after a tour of the slums, divers meetings 
and conferences, I am being borne to the train. Once 
in a while I do visit the good residence sections and 
parks, and always get a glimpse of them, coming and 
going from the slums. We have dashed across the 
business streets, lunched in great fine buildings, and, 
if there is one, I have seen the state house. It is 
always a matter of interest to me, as well as curi- 
osity. I like to figure out how long it would take 
to get from the Senate chamber to the House of 
Representatives. Some of them are too far apart. 



33£ BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

but I like the ones that have no place for the audi- 
ence, except the gallery, and the ones that are well 
ventilated. As to the marble stairs, and all that, 
the shortest way up takes me. 

It is not missing the beauty spots of a city that I 
mind. If I am imported for the purpose of issuing 
Jeremiads, and making miserable as many as possi- 
ble, I must be glad if I succeed, and be content to 
leave the " pleasures and palaces '' to other guests, 
who come on gayer missions. The part I do mind, 
though, is having to be remembered, like a wasp, for 
its sting. But there are always happenings that 
warm my heart, — and new friends. 

One of the greatest encouragements, in this jour- 
neying, has been meeting others interested in the 
same work, who have been through similar struggles, 
and often are farther along the road, and know how 
everything will work out. I can never forget our 
first National Housing Conference. I felt as a two- 
eyed person might who had lived in the Land of One- 
Eyed People, for a long time, and then came back 
to the two-eyed country. It was a relief to be with 
a whole association of people who saw as I did, with- 
out having to explain, argue or apologise. In fact, 
every one of them would have dared to ask for more 
than I had, and they thought we hadn't asked half 
enough for Indiana. It was most encouraging. 



LOOKING FORWARD 333 

I remember one lovely luncheon, during the con- 
ference, at which we discussed Ashes, Garbage, 
Alleys, and such things, for several hours, continuing 
the discussion at an after meeting, until dinner time, 
and then carrying It on till midnight. And still 
earnest groups gathered In the corridors, and lin- 
gered on the steps. Every kind of civic expert was 
there, and It was a joy to find out just how to do the 
things that on^ was puzzling over alone. 

It is far, indeed, that the White Road has led me 
— through the village, to the city, across the state, 
and out Into other states. And It has been " up 
hill all the way." But with every turn of the road 
there Is a broader view. There are surprises, too, at 
every turn, such beautiful surprises, and so many of 
them, that I have come to expect something unex- 
pected around every comer. Some of them are good 
times. Some are unlooked for help. The best and 
the most wonderful of them are the friendships. And 
I was looking only for thorns and flinty places — and 
brickbats, as I remember! 

True, there is weary climbing and hard fighting 
still in store, but there are the little resting places, 
where one can stop and take a full breath, and look 
out over the view. 

It is a glorious thing to be standing at the gap of 



334 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Opportunity, to be in the sweep of great movements, 
in the current of all good purposes, in the company 
of lofty souls. It is great to feel that one is living, 
even now and here, the eternal life, and to rest in the 
poise of a perfect trust in the Divine Will. Only 
so can one wait with patience and serenity for the 
issues of life. Only so can one bear to look down into 
the Shadow, and hear the wail of the helpless and 
suffering, and feel their burden, as one's own. 

Looking back over these years, and the struggle 
to which they have been devoted, I am thankful that 
they have given me more, and not less, faith in both 
God and man. I am glad that I can see the most 
hopeful phase of the forces that hindered. I am 
grateful for all the forces that helped — the per- 
sonalities, rather, for every force was represented by 
some strong man or woman, and it is they whom I 
remember. Of all the forces arrayed against Hous- 
ing Reform, selfishness, ignorance and indifference 
were the ones that hindered most. I really believe 
that ignorance is the prime cause, for most of those 
who are indifferent would arouse to action if they 
could know. And a majority of those who fought 
us, through selfish interest, would cease to oppose, 
I believe, if they could see how much misery their 
selfishness costs. But they will never know, fully, un- 
less we could put into the penalties of our tenement 



LOOKING FORWARD 835 

law that the owners of slum property should be In- 
carcerated a term in their own tenements. I remem- 
ber how, in my first campaign, I tried to excuse the 
landlords, because housing reform was a new thought, 
and they, perhaps, did not know better. But now, 
for six years. Housing Reform has been taught from 
one end of the state to the other. It has been 
preached by pulpit and press. The chambers of 
commerce have endorsed it, the boards of health have 
insisted upon it. The charities organisations have 
begged for it, the women's clubs have demanded it. 
Pictures have been published, and thrown upon 
screens, describing the dangers and horrors of slums, 
and if people don't know yet that " it is no better to 
kill a man with a house than it is to kill him in the 
street with an axe," it is time they did. Still, we 
have been amazed, even this year, to find who are the 
men and women who own the most of the worst 
houses. Wealthy, many of them, for slums are pay- 
ing property. Respected, because the community 
does not know the source of their revenue. Many 
are prominent in society, but their friends live, too, 
in the best part of town, and never pass by their 
property. Some of them are church members! 
Some even build churches with their revenues ! 

There can be no doubt that these persons know 
the value of sanitation, also of light and air and 



336 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

space, for they live on choice corners, or other good 
sites, and their homes have every sanitary device. 

I know one town where two men own practically all 
the wretched dwellings of the poor. " One of them 
buys up old box cars, and makes them over into 
shanties," we were told. This man is disliked and 
not even respected. The town reahses that his deeds 
are an abomination, a wrong to the poor and a 
menace to the community, but they do not realise it 
keenly enough. Not one citizen has thought to lift 
a finger to interfere with him. 

In other cities one is sui-prlsed to find the easy- 
going forbearance of the large body of high-class 
real estate men, towards the few sharks who own slum 
property, even though their own property is injured 
and their fire hazard inci*eased by the latter, in their 
vicinity, and even though the slum owner has a large 
and undue advantage over them, in many ways. 

It is pleasant to turn from the forces that hin- 
dered Housing Reform to those that helped. I wish 
I might have a chapter on " The Men Who Helped," 
and express the gratitude that is due to every man 
who has unselfishly done his part towards this much 
of bringing in the Kingdom, whether he be politician 
or preacher. 

Those three campaigns in the legislature were a 
wonderful experience, and if I have come out of tliem 



LOOKING FORWARD 337 

with a deeper faith in humanity it is a high tribute 
to the men of Indiana. 

In those three campaigns, standing, as I have, on 
the outside of parties and politics, I have seen some 
things that strangely puzzled me, but, as no one 
has given me a more satisfactory interpretation than 
my own, I shall hold to my own conclusions until the 
Wise Men agree. 

When I first went into public life I made up my 
mind to make the most, and the best, of conditions 
I as they existed, of men as I met them, and of poli- 
tics as the majority allow them to be. In fact, one 
cannot do otherwise, for obviously one cannot work 
I with conditions as they are not. Yet I have seen 
many earnest but ineffective people fail to secure 
by legislation the splendid ends they had worked 
zealously to achieve, because they insisted on the 
I impossible, and would have none but their own meth- 
j ods. It is just as if we should take our corn to a 
miller, and demand that he should reset his burrs and 
I change his whole method of milling. If there be only 
one mill, we must take our grist or leave it. 

Having no hand in the management of political 

affairs, I may leave to the various parties the care of 

1 reaping the thorns in each other's fields. It has 

been my pleasant task to gather only the grapes, and 

I am fain to accept the divine guarantee that they 



I 



338 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

were grown upon grape vines. It is only fair to say; 
that I have encountered far more figs than thistles, 
and fewer thistles than what seems to be a sort of 
cacti that, I firmly believe, could be BuAankised for 
human good. Would they might be, and that we 
might include, in the Conservation of Vital Resources, 
those great powers, possibilities for good, that are 
so wasted by constant warring, in the struggle for 
supremacy I 

" Dearie, don't you believe, for one minute, that 
those politicians would have worked for a tenement 
law if they hadn't thought it was a good thing for 
their party? " a friend said. 

" Why, of course," I said to her, " I wouldn't 
have gone to three legislatures and asked for any- 
thing that sensible business men wouldn't think was 
a good thing. One's faith in men doesn't depend 
upon their doing foolish things because we ask them 
to. And, of course, no good politician will ever 
* turn down ' the Homes of Indiana. But nobody 
could ever make me believe that was all there was 
of it." And then I tried to tell her of the splendid 
hearty way they had given their service, and the 
noble qualities that had so often shown themselves. 

In order that this story shall not fail of its pur- 
pose, let me say, first, that it has been my intention 
to show that if any one so timid, and so physically 



LOOKING FORWARD 339 

unfortified for hard marching and fighting, could 
stand the strain and meet with some success, surely 
no one else should fear to try. 

It has been far from my thought to hold up public 
work as the most valuable service. Rather, I have 
tried to make it plain that no one but a genuine 
Daruma, who is weighted so as not to be upset-able, 
should go into the range of the cannon-balls. In the 
words with which " Mrs. Blythe " comforted " Mary 
Ware," whose sole idea of public service was the 
former's kind of " torch bearing " : "A torch is a 
torch, no matter where you put it, and sometimes the 
lights streaming from cheerful home windows make 
better guides for the benighted traveller than the 
street lamp, whose sole purpose is to give itself to the 
public.'' 

Most strongly have I desired to show how much 
can be done by women's organisations, by simply de- 
manding right legislation, and to show their equally 
important part of helping to enforce legislation, 
after they get it. I should like to show the very 
valuable work that has been done by clubs in raising 
funds to employ civic experts, but the suggestion 
must suflace. 

Too much cannot be said, however, of the service 
into which even the most modest and timid may 
enter, by joining in the work of the federated clubs. 



340 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

or civic organisations, to carry on the great educa- 
tional campaigns for moulding public sentiment, that 
must precede and follow every legislative success. 
This assertion is made by the majority of speakers 
on reform platforms. What is not said, however, or 
is touched too little and too lightly, is that the funda- 
mental necessity of all this work is the securing of 
data, the knowing of actual conditions that call for 
reform. 

" Go and see for yourself," is my parting plea to 
every audience, no matter of whom composed. 
" Know your city " is a motto that I wish might be 
sounded daily, by a megaphone, in the ears of every 
one who presumes to have any part in the control 
of chambers of commerce or civic associations, 
school boards, social service circles, churches, wom- 
en's clubs, etc. They should be made to see that if 
they are to give intelligent service they must know 
their city as the politician knows it, as the police 
know it, as the drain man and the man who reads 
gas metres know it — because the outside and the 
pretty places we already know well. They should 
know their city, who try to manage its affairs, as a 
merchant knows his business, in all its details; as a 
doctor knows his patient, with all his weaknesses. 
Know it by means of surveys and sanitary maps, that 
X-ray every defect, and by " civic institutes," that 



LOOKING FORWARD 341 

exhibit its greatnesses and meannesses, its overlap- 
ping or undermanning of departments; its schools, 
factories, trade, traffic, institutions — all the 
" works," from the city hall to the saloon, from 
the choice residence district to the slum quarter. 
How else shall we understand the causes that are 
piling up social wreckage, faster than our schools 
can educate or our churches evangelise? How else 
can we ever know with certainty the city's resources 
of wealth, which pours in, in large streams, and runs 
out in many leaks ? How else shall we be able to help 
our city's morals, of which one half are in dark- 
ness? How else reckon with the city's political 
forces, of which the stronger part, the root, is un- 
derground, like the horse-radish? And how shall we 
control the public health, safety, and welfare unless 
we can keep our finger on the pulse of the private 
health and safety and welfare, as they exist in the 
individual home? 

And so we come back to the Home, as this story 
, started. All roads lead back to it; and the squad 
! that goes out to hunt up the evils that prey upon 
j society, whether they follow the lead of the charity 
worker, the district nurse, the mission worker, the 
health official, the probation officer, the detective, or 
i the anti-tuberculosis specialist, will take a circuit and 
' all round up and meet together in the place where 



342 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

the housing reformer has gone straight to the core 
of all the trouble — the homes that society forgets, 
neglects, abandons! 

The paths of these workers were traced in red on 
a city chart at the Housing Conference in Cincinnati. 
There is a red and black story that goes with the 
chart, too, about the places where the lines converge. 

In my last paragraph I did not say anything about 
the trails of the civic improvers or city beautifiers 
converging with those who track the fly, the germ 
and the imp, because in so many cities they go on 
a careful detour and avoid these places. And yet 
these hideous, offending, bad residence districts, where 
visitors are never taken, and nobody likes to go, cry 
most loudly for help, with all their ugly mouths and 
discordant voices, smiting the passerby in the eye 
and nose. And what assault they must make upon 
those who live amidst them ! It is these parts of the 
town that need beautifying, more than any other, 
and I have often wondered why, in so many cities, 
the civic clubs begin and end with their beautifying 
upon the lawns and gardens and parks, instead of 
the houses. The reason must be that it is easier. 

Perhaps it is on the same principle that many 
business organisations devote themselves only to 
trade and traffic, ignoring other business of the city, 
calling for home-seekers, but neglecting the attrac- 



LOOKING FORWARD 343 

tiveness of the city that would lure them, overlook- 
ing the interests of real estate, providing for the 
growth of " business," but not for the growth of 
population. 

It is all probably caused by a misconception of 
what a city is, and what it is for, and a failure to 
recognise that a city is mostly made up of homes, 
outnumbering all other buildings. That the streets 
are there to lead to the homes, and the stores are 
there to supply the homes. That for the homes all 
mills grind or weave, all wheels turn, all traffic exists, 
and all the business of the city goes on. That the 
parks are there to supply the lacks or augment the 
delights of the homes, but can never take the place 
of space or beauty about them. That, when the mills 
are empty and still, and the streets deserted and 
dark, when the parks and gardens have only a soli- 
tary sentinel, the human life that quickened them in 
the day time has all withdrawn into the homes. 
Thither at night the toiler comes. Thence at dawn 
the toiler fares; but his treasure remains there, the 
little ones, the mothers, the old people who must 
stay. And where they are is the Heart of the City. 

In our state we have settled upon a simple trans- 
lation of the term " housing reform," into " the bet- 
terment of the homes." This takes away the cold, 
forbidding aspect of the subject, and insures a larger 



344 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

audience when we lecture. The public smelled fresh 
mortar and new pine whenever the other term was 
mentioned, and had in mind an arraignment of car- 
penters and masons. But the real meaning of 
" housing reform " comes out when we put the 
" home " into it. The " house '' lives, the lights 
twinkle in the windows, the smoke comes out of its 
chimneys, and the public can smell the supper and 
hear the children play. That is, they can, until we 
make them smell the yards and hear the children cry. 
" The Homes of Indiana " has proven a magic 
watchword for housing reform in our state. Al- 
ready two other states have caught up the battlecry, 
and we hear " The Homes of Kentucky," and " The 
Homes of New Jersey.'' Would that the cry might 
ring on till we hear " The Homes of the Nation! '* 

* Now, we have many prescriptions for housing re- 
form, from many schools of medicine. Belonging to 
the Allopathic school, I must hold to legislation as 
the best cure, though I am ready to welcome most 
heartUy everything that can show by results that it 
will help our sick cities. Not all civic doctors will 
consult, however, and housing legislation is attacked 
!by others than " skin builders " and slum landlords. 
The comedy of the situation lies in the fact that half 
who attack housing laws complain that they do not 
go far enough, and the other half charge that they 



LOOKING FORWARD 845 

go too far. If we could pit the two parties against 
each other, it would save our breath. 

To the first we must give the answer of Solon when 
asked whether he had provided the best of laws for 
the Athenians, — " The best they were capable of 
receiving." 

To the others, who complain of the law's exactions, 
we can best answer by pointing to our better class of 
real estate men, who take an honest pride in doing 
the right and proper thing, and who give so much 
more to their tenants than any housing law demands 
(for much less percentage of returns) that they feel 
insulted when asked if they give water and sewerage 
connections, repairs, etc. 

Looking back at the years of toil, and what they 
have brought, I feel no triumph, but a deep shame 
that it has been necessary to fight so hard and so 
long for air! For sunlight! For water! For 
space! It is a stifling thought. One would think 
we had decreed marble baths and gold door knobs to 
hear men say, with a sudden tenderness for the 
needy, " But if we have to build houses like that, what 
will the poor people do? They can't pay the rent." 

It is cheering to hear a defender of the law pro- 
claim that in one of our new towns, which has 25-foot 
lots, tenements can be built according to the law and 
still yield a revenue of 22 per cent, net. 



346 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

As education advances, housing laws will be ex- 
tended, but their extension will be mainly to other 
classes of buildings, and to higher standards of de- 
cency and safety. And yet I could die happy were 
it possible to leave, by means of housing laws, no 
more than the Irishman's legacy : " I bequeath to 
every man the free air of heaven." 

Simple wish! Preposterous supposition! 

Could our forefathers ever have believed, when 
first they trod the lonely shores of this country, and 
looked out over its vast unpeopled wastes, that we 
should be fighting to-day for the very air we breathe ? 
No more than that we should cease to have the 
breath of Freedom. Nor do we dream how much 
harder the fight will be in the day when monstrous 
cities shall cover our plains, the cities where, we 
are told, the greater part of our population is to 
live. 

Judging by the rate of growth of our cities to-day, 
we wonder how far ahead that growth will keep of 
the advance of civilisation, and how many cities will 
first have to sin and then to be reformed, ere we learn 
to plan and to restrict before we build. 

For the present, our cities have been growing much 
faster than they have been improving. We are 
speeding on to greatness, while we are crawling out 
of barbarism — that barbarism that submits to filth, 



LOOKING FORWARD 347 

and lack of sanitation, and preventable vice and 
disease. 

Any one, with an untrained eye, can look about and 
name the elementary problems of sanitation that we 
have failed to solve, or at least to handle. It needs 
no civic expert to do that, but it would need a prophet 
to tell us when we shall achieve them. Light and 
ventilation — when the space that insures them is 
held dearer than life, and when even our little towns 
have dark rooms ! Cleanliness — how many really 
clean cities have we? If they have clean streets, 
how about their alleys? If they have water and 
sewer mains, how many lots have access to them? 
Garbage and ashes and trash — the worry of the 
wealthy, the terror of the poor^ — -how many cities 
deal adequately with them to-day? In most of them 
every kind of waste is stored at the back doors, for 
a day, a week or a lifetime. And until these simple 
essentials are mastered, how can we hope for the 
higher things? 

Perhaps even now in their cradles are the legis- 
lators who shall enact the laws that shall bring some 
of these fundamental reforms. It is best to begin on 
them in their cradles, and then follow them up in the 
kindergarten, the school and the college. It saves 
the frantic letter sent just before election. 

Some day we shall appreciate safety and sanitation 



348 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

enough to pay for them ; and all the experts, of whom 
we have many noted ones, cannot give these things 
to us before that time. Some time we shall appreci- 
ate space in our cities, as we appreciate all desirable 
things when they begin to disappear. Later, 
Beauty will be called in, and set in the place of 
honour, among " practical " people ; no more 
crowded out, no more apologised for, no more even 
kept for " solitary festival." 

I am glad that those years are past in which I 
dared not publish a verse, and spent my time in 
hunting up dollar- and-cents arguments (and there 
are many) to show that bad housing is bad business, 
and that slums do not pay. And this was because 
of having to fight men who assumed that it was not 
" practical '' to give decency and sanitation to every 
one. 

It is only necessary, now, to refer sceptics to the 
more than forty commercial organisations that have 
taken up housing reform by housing laws. It is 
enough to point to the practical men who have 
actually built model houses to rent, that are durable 
and well built, comfortable, homelike, private, and 
that have veritable cupboards and sinks, and actual 
bathtubs. They are on pleasant streets, with a good 
view, have trees, grass and flowers, rent for less than 




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LOOKING FORWARD 349 

some of our most miserable and squalid slums, and 
pay a fair profit. 

Leaving the sceptics gazing at this pleasant sight, 
it is a relief to slip away to a quiet place where the 
vista opens upon a view that rests my soul — a view 
of things whose practical nature no one will ask me, 
at least, to defend — Planned Towns! Garden 
Cities ! 

Ever above the quivering heat of noon in the 
desert they have hung like a dim, fair mirage. Does 
any one ever look upon them more wistfully than a 
housing reformer? We draw near to them, as the 
children of the tenements come and press their faces 
against the tall palings of the forbidden garden, 
standing without in the dust, peering in at the ranks 
of lilies, the winding walks, and the fountain-splashed 
bowers. And we have a place inside, too, for even 
as in the Garden of Buddha there had to be the con- 
stant removal of blight and decay, and the jealous 
guard upon destructive forces, the constant weeding 
and pruning, there will always be this need, in all 
places where men live. 

I had hoped that we might have, before this, the 
simple initial enactment permitting town planning 
in our state. It must come soon, or we shall pay 
dearly for the lack of it. 



350 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Some day^— a later day, perhaps, we shall have 
the Garden Village. It is my dream to help plant 
one in Indiana, when the heaviest part of our task 
is accomplished, and there to end my days. 

At this time, in the absence of the Town Plan, the 
most we can do is to spend our time in warning our 
young towns, and in holding a mirror hefore the 
fading charms of our aging cities, imploring them to 
call in a beauty doctor before it is too late. We 
can show them the blemishes that can be removed, and 
the contours that can be — reduced. 

Where we can get people to listen, let us plead for 
generous space allowances, especially in our new city 
enlargements. The sanitarian and the artist, also 
the unhampered architect, will all agree to this. So 
much depends upon space, outlook most of all. The 
curse of the narrow lot is like the curse of the narrow 
mind. It fastens upon us the restricted view, the 
selfish attitude. It invites congestion. It encour- 
ages mean buildings. It hampers a town as inevi- 
tably as foot-binding hampers the Chinese child. 

Even the " crazy-quilt '' city can give much in the 
way of beauty to dignify the characters of its peo- 
ple, that will bless them from their windows • — if they 
have windows. It can give the improved streets and 
alleys, the parks and gardens, upon which even the 
mean dwelling may lift its eyes and take cheer. So 



LOOKING FORWARD 361 

far as monuments, fountains or public buildings may 
be in sight, in vista or in sky line, nobility may be 
brought into the daily lives of the people. To those 
who have outlook may all view be given. But to 
those who are set back, overtopped and shut in, the 
character of the premises becomes all important, and 
leaves the problem between the tenant, the landlord 
and the neighbours. 

Now, with the object lessons of our model tene- 
ments, it is needless to suggest what c^n be done for 
the poor, when we are building new houses. In the 
matter of old houses, all we need to do is to imagine 
ourselves trying to make a home in any one of them ; 
to notice what stifles and depresses us; to see how 
we would manage, without closets; to decide what 
we would do with the floors, how we would conceal 
the walls, that are past mending or papering; how 
to make the best of the possibilities, or rather, the 
impossibilities. 

We will find ourselves coming out somewhat behind 
those enchanting story-book descriptions of poverty, 
that deal with the " poor-but-honest," and " patched- 
but-clean " people. The " scoured deal table," the 
" shining tins," the " geranium in the window," the 
"prints on the wall," always sound so delectable. 
As children, we could never quite decide whether we 
would rather be fabulously wealthy, and sit on dia- 



352 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

mond chairs, or be poor this way, but strongly 
inclined to the latter. I know that settlement work- 
ers, often, with great taste, a little money, and infi- 
nite labour, perform miracles of paint and paper 
upon certain old houses, and make them look as good 
as the story-book kind. Would we had more of such 
people, to plant more oases in our arid brick wastes ! 
But all the old houses cannot be transformed that 
way, not even by the " municipal scrubbers,'' welcome 
las they are. And the reason is that there are some 
old houses that were flimsy and mean, even in their 
newness, that now, in their decay, are beyond reform. 
To try to beautify them with paint, etc., is much 
like gilding a skull. The premises are even worse, 
with loathsome cellars, yards soaked through with 
grease and sewage poison, and hard with cinders. 
All that could redeem such a spot would be to bum 
the house, blast out the foundations, fumigate the 
hole, cart away the composite horrors of the soil, 
and fill in with fresh, sinless country earth — though 
we would pity the earth-worms in their new environ- 
ment, A new house might be built thereon, and upon 
the new earth might one produce loveliness and gar- 
den truck — if there be not tall, gloomy walls, on all 
sides, to shut out the sunlight. This is a formula 
for the owner, not the tenant. What the tenant can 
do, with little means and less taste, is pitiful enough. 



LOOKING FORWARD 353 

I have seen tenants expending work on old houses — 
work as hopeless as efforts to educate an Imbecile — 
that would have made a decent dwelling most attrac- 
tive. Yet I can testify that the house looked worse 
than before, because the extra scrubbing wore off 
more of the old paint. 

I have said enough, in other chapters, of the 
efforts of many of the poor to make things more 
home-like, and of their reaching out for brightness 
and beauty. It seems to be, as Maeterlinck says, 
" A groping about the walls of life,'' to find some 
chink where the light streams in. 

There must be something in this universal craving 
for Beauty that testifies to our universal need of it. 
It must be meant to lead us back to the Garden, by 
the unerring perceptions of the delicate antennae of 
the soul. We feel that craving as a deep thirst, the 
longing for the woods and fields, the open shore, the 
stretches of cloudland. Confinement is irksome and 
work is hateful, at times, not for itself, but because 
it shuts us in, away from the green, the blue-and- 
gold, the Something that draws us. And when we 
leave the town and go to the country places, how we 
feel the restfulness of their beauty sweeping in upon 
us, in a great tide! 

How much the beauty of physical environment can 
contribute to moral beauty, or be reflected by it, we 



S54 BEAUTY EQR ASHES 

do not yet know. I am convinced that we have not 
yet begun to estimate its value, in our environment, 
as we shall in years to come. We think of it as 
desirable, but in no way essential, and until it is 
exalted to a place of more dignity we shall not have 
it in our national life. With all our rugged strength, 
we shall be like the unfinished temple, " wanting still 
the glory of the spire.'' 

How shall we, then, come to a higher estimate of 
beauty? Only by taking it to be " that divine thing 
the ancients ever esteemed it to be," as Emerson re- 
minds us. 

The great value of beauty is that it reveals God 
— His love. His thought. His truth. His love, be- 
cause of the pleasure it gives, and because of its 
power to keep us sane and well. It reveals His 
truth because those laws that govern it, in colour, im 
perspective, etc., are as unfailing as those of gravi- 
tation. The laws that govern it in music, in motion, 
in rhythm, are as exact as those of chemistry. In 
their harmonious workings we have beauty ; in disre- 
gard of them, discord, ugliness. So we might say 
that the essence of beauty is obedience to divine law, 
and ugliness is anarchy. And so we can realise why 
beauty is creative and ugliness is destructive; why 
beauty rests, inspires and soothes, and ugliness dis- 
turbs, depresses and jars. 



LOOKING FORWARD 355 

The restorative and healing power of beauty seems 
to be well established. We can well understand why 
the sick or deranged have, as a part of their treat- 
ment, the view of green pastures and still waters ; 
why cheerful flowers are brought about them, and 
soothing music played for them. 

The reformatory value of beauty may not be so 
well established, though some day the purgation of 
Beauty will supplant the purgatory of pain. Think- 
ing of the rebuke that purity gives to the impure, 
greatness to meanness, truth to falsity, the power of 
*Vgood for evil," we can but wonder why beauty 
should not be used more for both formative and re- 
formatory purposes. In fact, we acknowledge its 
value in our careful selection of those things that 
must be before the eyes of our own children. 

When society comes to value one child more truly, 
we shall have, for every community, a country home- 
stead where that child can go, who needs special en- 
couragement. It will not be a penal place, nor even 
a place of reform, but it will be held out, rather, as 
a dear delight and a reward. But when society values 
the child enough, and realises what the child means 
to the State, and what the home means to the child, 
it will provide even better, for then the child will 
have, in its own home, all that a home should give, in 
its vital essentials. There will be safety. There 



366 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

will be the chance to be well, to be pure; room to 
grow and breathe in ; the sacred privacy of the home 
circle — all those things that are the birthright of 
every child. And there will be, in some way, beauty, 
to which the soul of the child naturally turns, as does 
a plant to the light. 

Yet why should we need to plead for Beauty, when 
we have the words of its evangels, the " ever living 
poets,'' to whom has been given a share of that Spirit 
that is to "preach good tidings"? They have 
taught us that there is some power in beauty "to 
bind up the broken hearted," and " to comfort all 
who mourn." How often we invoke the very beauty 
of their words to do this, and set them to music or 
to flowers. How often, too, they release us from 
care, by " the opening of the prison " whose portals 
yield to their gentle touch. They have shown us 
beauty that we missed. They have yet to " open the 
blind eyes," that, in the midst of loveliness, gaze 
unseeing. 

All of this swept over me on that day, not long 
ago, when I went back to the ridge where my child- 
hood was passed. 

Standing on the top of the ridge, I looked across 
the sweep of the valley to the far ranges of the blue 
hills that lay beyond. In a meadow the sheep were 
grazing. Faint and far off came the country sounds. 



II 



LOOKING FORWARD 357 

strained to a clear sweetness through that pure 
atmosphere. It was the Sabbath, and in the little 
church they were singing hymns. In the churchyard, 
under the dark cedars, I could see the flags upon the 
soldiers' graves. " My country '' — it had never 
meant so much to me! A sudden rush of feeling 
seemed to claim comradeship with those who had 
fought on other battle fields. 

How profound was the Sabbath peace ! How sweet 
was the air ! The old spell of the view came over me. 
There ran the road to the valley, then climbed the 
hills, to the sky. As a child it had beckoned and 
lured me, with dreams of the cities that lay beyond. 
But now — I had seen the cities! I had thought 
of them, with a child's imagining, as one sees 
temples and spires in a sunset glory, and hears 
their far-oiF chimes. I had wondered about their 
poets, their artists — the beauty that must be 
there. 

And now, having seen them, the glamour was gone. 
Instead, there was the Shadow enfolding them, the 
Shadow that all of our effort has never been able to 
lift. And there, in the Shadow, are the poor, the 
toiling. Instead of the chiming of bells I could hear, 
far away, a great chorus of those whose groaning 
and crying mingled with the roar of the mills and 
the din of the streets. 



358 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

Like the shadow of clouds passing over the fields 
came another thought — the thought of the great 
cities that some day may be there, a blot on their 
greenness. But it passed. The fields lay untrou- 
bled, the great cup of the valley was brimming with 
sunshine, the sky swept down over the valley and 
closed in about me. 

The Presence was there! It filled all the vast 
spaces, near and far. I reached out my hand, as in 
childhood, to its tangible sureness. It will still be 
there, I felt, when we, having done our small part, 
are gone. When the cities are built, underneath the 
foundations will be the Divine Plan. 

Even now the Plan seems nearer fulfillment. Men 
are coming to see the fuller meaning of life. 
The levels of living are set at a higher plane. The 
units of measure are larger, the standards of value 
are fairer — for ourselves, for all men, as we learn 
that we have natures and needs alike. 

In wonderful ways the great teachers are leading 
the people, marshalling the forces that shall finally 
lift them out of the Shadow. There are the small 
forces, such as the gentle ministry that gives one's 
self to the needy. There are the mighty ones, the 
great movements to fight disease, to promote purity, 
to protect the labourer, to save the child. There are 



LOOKING FORWARD 359 

the countless methods of education. There is the 
pleasant drawing, as by the light touch of a child, 
along the paths of the playground, to health and 
strength. To them has been added, in later years, 
the various methods of redeeming the home. 

Too much of these forces has been needed to clear 
away the wreckage among the ruins. But now we 
can look across the " waste cities " that shall be re- 
built, the " desolations " that shall be raised up, to 
that joyful day of the prophecy when all of this 
social effort is to have its flowering in the beauty of 
the higher life, for all humanity. 

The " beauty " that the prophet proclaimed should 
be given for " ashes,'' is to be, the translators tell us, 
as the garland crown of the bridegroom that shall 
replace the symbol of mourning, the ashes upon the 
head. 

The ashes — all that chokes the spark of life, all 
that is a part or a reminder of hopeless despair — 
are to be put aside. 

The low and bestial life, all that is grovelling, is 
ashes. 

Disease, vice, dissipation, are ashes. 

Strife, discord, lawlessness, are ashes. 

Toil, without rest or recreation, is ashes. 

These are to be cast away, and instead we shall 



S60 BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

have the redeemed life, the reinstated family, the 
restored home. 

It is to be the crowning of life with its radiant 
graces, its supreme, shining joy! 



THE END 



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